Return of the...

You can insert the final piece of this title as you deem fit. Jedi, Mack, King, Living Dead, or any other of the many phrases we all know. The point is that the return is occurring. For those unaware, I was diagnosed with cancer some time ago. I have been undergoing treatment for lymphoma and the doctor’s anticipate a full recovery within the next few months. I am now returning to the underbelly of the sports world, infiltrating the minds of our greatest athletes and general managers, and exposing the truth about our leagues like Sam Spade would a corrupt noir plot.

The natural place to begin is to look in to what has been consuming my mind for close to a year. Cancer has occupied a large portion of my thoughts along with thousands of others around the world. One of these people is Boston Red Sox left-hander Jon Lester. It was just back in August of 2006 when Jon Lester was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to sacrifice his pitching career to endure treatment to save his life. He had a remarkable return to his baseball career just a year later, coming back to start 11 games in 2007 and then make his mark in the playoffs by pitching the 2007 World Series game clinching win over the Colorado Rockies. The comeback story has continued to escalate by pitching over 200 innings and bringing in at least 15 wins with a sub 4.00 ERA in 2008 and 2009. Now, this success story is just background noise when talking about Jon Lester. He is the most dominant left-handed pitcher in baseball this side of CC Sabathia after blowing through lineups with 225 strikeouts last season. Expectations for Lester are extremely high, and most inside the numbers of baseball believe he is the true ace and key to the Boston staff now, or at least up until Beckett transforms in to Mr. Hyde and takes over October. With Boston off to a slow start, the place to begin our investigation must begin with baseball’s success story Jon Lester.

Lester’s current stat line shows an 0-2 record, 6.23 ERA and a 1.75 WHIP. These are the numbers the headline the stats, but they don’t tell the real story. The first thing to be noted is Lester has faced three of the most potent offensive lineups in all of baseball (Yankees, Twins and Rays.) However, this is no excuse for a man that is supposed to be able to dominate any lineup on any given day and that includes the left handed heavy Yankees and Twins. So we have to look a little bit deeper than the lineup and the base stats.

This season Lester has a BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) at a higher rate than he ever has with a mark over .350. This is bound to come down a bit, since his rate of line drives given up has stayed constant throughout the years, but his ground ball rate is up this year. So he has been susceptible to the notorious “ground ball with eyes.” This may account for some of the issues with his high ERA, but the WHIP line is high due to his inordinate amount of walks so far this year. He has a K/BB rate of 1.62 this year as opposed to an amazing 3.52 last year. So for every 3 strikeouts last year, he gave up a walk, and this year it’s closer to one to one. You take the bat out of the hands of that many guys last year, and keep it in the hands of them this year, plus bring in the BABIP and we have the cause of these struggling stats. Now, we need to find out why these stats are occurring.

The last two years, Lester has thrown his fastball 55% of the time, while tossing the cutter 20% and the curveball 20%. Then he would mix in a changeup for the final 5%. This year, Lester has been throwing that changeup at a much higher rate. He is using it in situations where he threw the curveball last year. This year he is throwing the curveball and changeup at about 12% while maintaining the fastball and cutter at 55/20. These numbers and his high walk rate indicates that he is having a tough time locating this changeup, which is expected for a guy placing a pitch in to his repertoire at a more regular rate.

All these things indicate positive news ahead for Lester and the Red Sox. The changeup will have a lot less stress on Lester’s arm than the curveball, adding life to his career. The changeup has been generating a lot more groundballs which will prove positive for the improved Red Sox defense. As soon as Lester has a couple more starts of practicing that changeup, he will be a ground ball inducing, strike throwing lefty with enough power to punish hitters to the tune of 200 strikeouts. These Red Sox will win at least another 15 games behind Lester again this year and the cancer survivor has added a new pitch that will lengthen his career and add to his already dominating statistics and glorious return from a deadly disease.

- J Filth