Jon Lester

#31 / Pitcher / Boston Red Sox

Height: 6-2

Weight: 190

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Jan 07, 1984

A World Series-clinching win. A successful battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A no-hitter. Red Sox southpaw Jon Lester has already compiled a career's worth of accomplishments, and he's only going on 25.

A second-round selection out of Tacoma, Washington in the 2002 amateur draft, Lester quickly established himself as one of the most promising arms in Boston's farm system. After a solid full-season debut as a 19 year-old at Low-A Augusta in 2003, (106 IP, 6 K/9, 3.7 BB/9), the sturdy lefty punched out over a batter per inning in the High-A Florida State League in 2004 and the AA Eastern League in 2005. His control needed refinement (as evidenced by his 4.8 BB/9 at AAA Pawtucket in 2006), but he made his Fenway debut in the summer of '06 and appeared poised to infuse the Red Sox rotation with a home-grown ace to complement trade acquisition Josh Beckett.

Something far more serious took precedent, however, as Lester was diagnosed with a rare form of a blood cancer in September of that season. While he would spend the better part of the 2007 campaign regaining strength, Lester tossed 63 innings for the Sox and capped off the year on the highest of notes, pitching 5 and 2/3 scoreless innings in the series-winning game against the Colorado Rockies.

While his 2008 season got off to a rocky start (22/23 K/BB in April), Lester quickly righted the ship, culminating with a nine-strikeout, no-hit masterpiece against the Kansas City Royals on May 19th. Despite having pitched just 163 combined innings in 2007, Lester appeared to get stronger as the year progressed: from June onward, he posted a 103/30 K/BB ratio in 134.1 innings. So, Lester seems like he's making good on the lofty expectations bestowed upon him prior to his health problems. But how is he doing it? To find that out, let's take a look at Lester's Pitch F/X data.

The chart above shows the vertical and horizontal movement (in inches) that Lester got on his pitches in 2008, relative to a pitch thrown without spin. The X axis shows the amount of horizontal movement on Lester's pitches, while the Y axis shows the amount of vertical movement on the pitches. The chart is from the view of the catcher, so pitches with a negative horizontal (X axis) value are tailing in on a right-handed hitter. Pitches with a low vertical (Y axis) value are moving down in the strike zone; the lower the Y value, the more downward movement the pitch has.

The 6-2, 190 pounder appears to possess a five-pitch mix: a fastball, cutter, curveball, changeup and slider.

However, it's inaccurate to call Lester a five-pitch hurler. Lester's heater, thrown at an average of 92.1 MPH, has a very wide range both in terms of horizontal and vertical movement. With 6.03 inches of tailing action in on lefties and 7.77 inches of vertical movement, Lester's fastball has the velocity of a four-seam fastball and the motion in on the hands of lefties that one might expect from a two-seamer.

Initially, this pattern confused me. But after doing a little research, I found out that what we're seeing on Lester's chart is actually the combination of a four-seam and one-seam fastball. That's right, one-seam. Lester throws an offshoot of a sinker, gripped in an unusual manner along just one seam of the baseball. While the Pitch F/X data did not discern between the two pitches in terms of classification, the chart shows two distinct clusters, with the four-seamers in the upper right hand of the graph and the one-seamers below them and showing more horizontal movement. Lester's use of the one-seamer may also explain a pretty big uptick in his groundball percentage. Lester induced a worm-burner 47.5% of the time in 2008, up from 40.6% in 2006 and 34.4% in 2007.

For the sake of accuracy, I decided to slice Lester's fastballs into two categories, using a cutoff of 5 inches of vertical movement to differentiate between the four-seamers and one-seamers (the average sinker has about 4.7 inches of vertical movement). It's admittedly arbitrary, but it's a way to better define Lester's two fastballs. Here's an updated, more comprehensive chart of Lester's pitches:

 That's more like it. Now, we can see the difference between Lester's four-seamer and one-seamer.

Now that we have separated the fastballs, they look more like they should in terms of speed and movement. A four-seam fastball is thrown with the most direct application of force, meaning that backspin is imparted on the baseball. Consequently, four-seamers are thrown at a higher velocity, with more vertical movement and less horizontal break. This is the pitch that is sometimes called a "rising" fastball. While that's impossible and would defy the laws of gravity, the four-seamer "drops" less in relation to other pitches, giving it the illusion of rise.  Lester's four-seamer was thrown at an average of 92.3 MPH, with 5.51 inches of tailing action in on lefties and 8.73 inches of vertical movement. He utilized the pitch 47.3% of the time, more often to southpaws than right-handers.

In contrast, the two-seamer (one-seamer in Lester's case) displays more side-to-side action, with sinking movement coming at the expense of some speed. Lester broke out his one-seamer 11% of the time in 2008. The 91.1 MPH hybrid sinker had 3.62 inches of vertical movement and generated plenty of running action in on the hands of southpaws (8.25 inches), higher than the 7.6 major league average.

Lester used his two fastballs a fair amount against right-handed batters (a combined 53.9% of the time), but he really delivered the heat versus fellow southpaws (72.4%). With the ability to change eye levels with his fastballs, Lester eviscerated lefties this past season. Left-handers turned into Tony Pena Jr. versus Jon, batting a feeble .217/.269/.302.

While classified as a curveball, Lester's 76.1 MPH breaker is a sweeping, slurvy pitch. Lester's curve broke away from lefties (in to righties) an average of -5.12  inches (remember, a negative horizontal number means the pitch is breaking in toward a righty), while also dropping -5.14 inches in the zone more than a pitch thrown without spin would. With nearly two more inches of "drop" than the average curve (-3.3) and a big speed differential in comparison to his fastballs, Lester's slurvy offering has the look of a dynamite pitch. He wasn't shy about breaking out the curve against hitters of either hand: lefties saw the pitch 15% of the time, with righties getting the hook on 16.8% of their total pitches.

If a guy with six different pitches can be said to have a bread-and-butter offering, then Lester's cutter fits that description. Thrown 20% of the time overall, the 88.6 MPH pitch bored in on the hands of righties (-1.1 inches). Right-handers saw the pitch about twice as often (22.8%) as southpaws (11.5%).

Let's put that into perspective for a moment. The pitcher's mound is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Adjusting for the stride of the pitcher and the hitter having to make contact with the ball a little out in front, the distance between pitcher and hitter is roughly 53.5 feet. From that distance, Lester's 92.3 MPH four-seam fastball will arrive in .39520 seconds. His cutter will arrive in .41171 seconds. A right-handed batter has .0165 additional seconds to decipher whether a four-seam fastball is going to tail away from him or a cutter is going to jam him inside; the difference in horizontal movement between the pitches is 6.61 inches, well over half a foot. Ted Williams was fond of saying that hitting a baseball is the toughest feat in sports. It's pretty difficult to argue with The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived on that one.

Lester also tosses in an occasional changeup and slider, though neither offering figures prominently into his pitch selection. He tossed in an 83.4 MPH change just 3.7% of the time. The changeup sort of takes the middle ground between his four-seamer and one-seamer, tailing 8.46 inches away from righties and possessing 7.05 inches of vertical movement. The slider was incorporated even more rarely, on just 1.3% of Lester's total pitches. His slider seems like a pitch that could mess up the hitter's timing: thrown at an average speed of 83.1 MPH, the slider features -3.9 inches of horizontal movement and 0.24 inches of vertical break. In comparison to his curve, Lester's slide piece is thrown about 7 MPH faster, with less sweeping action and vertical drop. A batter looking for Lester's big curve could end up surprised by the slider.

Suffice it to say, Jon Lester is well-equipped to remain one of the better starters in the American League. With two different fastballs, a devastating cutter and a sweeping curve, Lester can locate his pitches to all four quadrants of the strike zone. If there is a concern with Jon, it's that his workload increased by a whopping 74 innings between 2007 and 2008. The consequences of that increase remain to be seen. But, if Lester remains healthy, don't be surprised if makes a serious run at the Cy Young Award in 2009.

A Journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Driveline Mechanics, Fan Graphs and Inside Edge Scouting Services. Contact David via email at golebie1029@duq.edu or judidave87@msn.com