jon lester fangraphs

Look at some of his other stats from the regular season and playoffs over the course of his career. In most fantasy drafts, Lester satisfies that “staff ace” slot for managers who like to lean on someone to anchor their pitching staff. In 148 postseason innings, the 34-year-old lefty has a 3.62 FIP. You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. On Tuesday, for the second time inside of a week, two of the NL’s top starting pitchers in terms of ERA — the Cubs’ Jon Lester (2.10, third in the league) and the Dodgers’ Ross Stripling (1.99, which would rank second if he weren’t 4.2 innings short of qualifying) — will square off, this time in Los Angeles. You can find him on twitter at @michaelcbarr. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions. All minor league baseball data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media Another difference is that he has begun pitching inside more to righties. Some pitches look the same for longer, until subtle differences in movement take … All minor league baseball data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media This is, in part, due to a change in his pitch selection, which has impacted his strikeouts: Odd chart to read, but yes – he’s throwing the four seam fastball more, producing fewer swings and misses, the curve a little more producing zero whiffs, the slider much more producing zero whiffs, and the cutter less, which is perhaps the only reliable out pitch versus left handed batters he has thus far. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions. Sign In. Great article. Website admin will know that you reported it. Lester may have ditched the change because his other pitches fit better together. Maybe he has noticed hitters were crowding the plate. by Retrosheet. by Retrosheet. Over the last month, though, Lester has put together a fantastic 2.39 FIP and 1.52 ERA heading into the playoffs. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. Meanwhile, although batters aren’t swinging and missing against his curve as often, particularly outside the zone, they’ve hit just .139/.184/.194 in the 38 PA that have ended with a hook, striking out 13 times and walking none (he hit two). It’s not too difficult to peer into his stats and determine the cause. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous. Gift a Membership. He finished as the sixth-best starting pitcher, per Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings at the position. It’s just that, relative to years past, they’re hitting fewer ground balls with it (40.9%, compared to a 50.7% career rate). And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous. This capped a much needed bounce-back season for Lester. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted as distributed by STATS. All minor league baseball data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media We just recently updated our player pages for mobile and added a few new features! He went from being a quick worker for most of the season to slower than league average for the final month. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). All along the way, he’s demonstrated an inability to re-create the swing-and-miss stuff that allowed him to breeze through similar tight situations in years past. Unless he can curb that latter tendency and miss more bats, it seems highly likely he’ll regress, particularly given the historic ERA-to-FIP differential. But it’s a pretty useful team stat when you want your team to win games. He’s what one might characterize as a “big-game pitcher.”. If those clubs opted to prioritize defense in the playoffs, some weak contact and good defense could help to explain some of that disparity. The team has been working extra hard behind him, helping Lester to a .231 BABIP, the league’s third-lowest mark, and a hefty 79 points below last year’s mark. Updated: Saturday, October 17, 2020 7:17 AM ET, Park Factors All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, But his sinker isn’t doing much in the missing bats department: In two strike counts, Lester went to his cutter 40% of the time in 2011 producing a 16% whiff rate, and this year it’s down to 29% usage in two strike counts producing a 10% whiff rate. It’s asking too much for him to sustain his differentials, however, particularly when his average exit velocities are so much higher than they were in 2016. Updated: Saturday, October 17, 2020 7:17 AM ET, Park Factors But he’s smart. Jon Lester posted a 2.46 ERA, a 1.10 WHIP, and 220 strikeouts in 2014. by Handedness, 2002 June Amateur Draft - Round: 2, Pick: 16, Overall: 57, Team: Boston Red Sox, 6 yr, $155M (2015-20), 2021 vesting option. His slightly lower strikeout and walk numbers indicate that hitters have made more contact against Lester in the postseason, although it’s quite possible that some of that contact has been of the weaker variety if batters have traded in strikeout avoidance for power. Lester entered the 2017 season having averaged 230 innings over the previous four campaigns — including a roughly 240-inning effort in 2016 en route to the Cubs’ first World Series since the election of Taft. Owners across the fantasy landscape collectively breathed a sigh of relief. It’s not because he’s giving up less hard contact, either — and, in fact, his batted-ball profile is rather out of character: Since coming over to the Cubs in the winter of 2014-2015, Lester has generally been in the middle of the pack or a bit higher as far as ground-ball rates go, at least among NL starters; last year, he was 16th out of 31 NL qualifiers, the year before that, 29th out of 70. Over the last four seasons, Lester, 28, is ranked 5th among qualified starters in K/9 at 9.17, just a tick behind Tim Lincecum, Yovani Gallardo, Clayton Kershaw, and Justin Verlander. Thanks! From 2014 to -16, he averaged about 93 mph with that same pitch. It’s possible Lester buckled down a bit with runners on base: he recorded more strikeouts and walks in those situations while also allowing fewer home runs. Only once in his past 10 starts has he allowed more than two runs (four in six innings versus the Pirates in a May 29 win), good for a 1.58 ERA over 62.2 innings. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions. And yet, it was against the Seattle Mariners who have a tendency to make starting pitchers of questionable quality look like Cy Young. His plate-discipline numbers haven’t changed too much either. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous. First, he’s pitching much more slowly. In five World Series starts (plus one relief outing), Lester has pitched 35.2 innings, struck out 34, walked just eight, and conceded only eight runs (seven earned). This is where his fastball went to righties for the first five months of the season. However, he’s striking out just 7.0 per nine (down from 8.97 just a year ago), his lowest rate since 2008, and walking 3.1 per nine, his highest mark since 2011. Owners across the fantasy landscape collectively breathed a sigh of relief. But wait! Jon Lester CHC SP L Born: 01/07/1984 (Age: 36) FanGraphs Player Page. Updated: Saturday, October 17, 2020 7:17 AM ET, Park Factors Note the gap between ERA and FIP for what is essentially the first half of the season and then the poor numbers in both statistics for much of the second half. He’s made 21 career playoff starts and recorded a few important relief outings, too. Check out our. It does look like he’s made two alterations over the past month, though. His results haven’t been awful, and from a fantasy perspective, you can learn to live with this version of Lester. And I get that I’m cherry picking a bit — there are other areas that he’s kind of the “old” Lester — but an ability to miss bats is pretty crucial, and right now, Lester’s not doing much of it. His 80.3% left-on-base rate, however, represented the eighth-highest mark in baseball. In addition to the troubling declines in strikeouts and velocity, the years have also yielded an increase in walks and homers. Jon Lester CHC SP L Born: 01/07/1984 (Age: 36) FanGraphs Player Page. He’s more or less shelved his sinker (4.4%, down from 12.3% last year) while throwing his changeup (11.1%) about twice as often as two years ago and more than at any time since 2013; his usage of the curve has slowly climbed, as well. Positions SP . Over the same time span, he’s fourth in overall WAR at 16.9, ahead of Kershaw, Chris Carpenter, Cole Hamels, and Matt Cain, among many other great arms. Support FanGraphs. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. His 5 wRC+ with the pitch is a Wile E. Coyote fall from last year’s 107 and is well below his career mark of 72 as well. Jon Lester career pitching statistics for Major League, Minor League, and postseason baseball. From 2008 to 2010, there were only six pitchers in baseball better than Jon Lester, and you can probably identify them all by first name — Roy, Cliff, Tim, Zack, CC and Justin.Last year however, was a different story. Depending upon the schedules of Max Scherzer (10-3, 2.09 ERA) and Jacob deGrom (5-3, 1.69 ERA) as well as the preferences of their respective teams, it’s not completely farfetched that NL All-Star manager Dave Roberts could give Lester (who’s a gaudy 9-2 to go with that ERA) the start on July 17 at Nationals Park, though you can imagine the pressure will be on the Nationals to make Scherzer available, health permitting. But wait! I think the next several starts will help identify if the repertoire trend is a real one. The Pittsburgh Pirates are a fast-emerging dark horse in the Jon Lester sweepstakes, joining the Los Angeles Dodgers in pursuit of the Boston ace as the Red Sox decide whether to trade him before Thursday’s deadline, major league sources told Yahoo Sports.. Lester’s a big fish. by Handedness, 2002 June Amateur Draft - Round: 2, Pick: 16, Overall: 57, Team: Boston Red Sox, 6 yr, $155M (2015-20), 2021 vesting option. Despite those superficially glossy stats, Lester is nowhere near the top of the NL pitching WAR leaderboard. Indeed, Lester has surrendered a mere two runs and 13 hits in his last four starts (27 innings), both via solo homers by Cardinals in a June 15 game that the Cubs won, 13-5. And yet, it was against the Seattle Mariners who have a tendency to make starting pitchers of questionable quality look like Cy Young. And in terms of luck, his predictors are pretty much in agreement with his FIP at 3.52, xFIP at 3.99 and SIERA at 4.17. Gift a Membership. His sinker produced — and still produces — a ground-ball rate just south of 70%, but this year, it’s been hit hard, and he’s kept it in his pocket, avoiding it entirely in each of the past two outings and throwing three or fewer in seven of his past 11 turns. This year, he’s 37th out of 43, producing more flies than grounders for the first time since his abbreviated 2007 season. FanGraphs Membership. I love Jon Lester, but he’s one of the most comically inept pitchers out there at fielding his position. That’s a bit better than major-league average. Perhaps Lester has watched Cole Hamels succeed by going inside and has followed his fellow lefty’s lead. So Lester is having a superficially strong season thanks to his particularly effective curve and changeup, and in spite of a trend towards harder contact. Here are his walk and strikeout rates the past few seasons. The disconnect for Lester is that his FIP (4.19) is almost exactly double his ERA, ranking 28th among the 43 pitchers with enough innings to qualify and 37th out of 59 with at least 60 innings; his 104 FIP- tells us that he’s actually 4% worse than league average on that front.

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