Jon Lester PFX Breakdown

Jon Lester has been on a roll lately. Ever since early to mid-May, everything has been working for him. Look at his home game log courtesy of Baseball Musings, day-to-day logs. Now look at what he has done since 5/4 at home. (his 5th start on was on 5/4/2008). That is a truly amazing 4 game stretch.

So let's look at the PFX data.

First, his release point data across many a couple different formats

To begin with, you see that the curveball appears to come from slightly higher than all of the other pitches. This happens a lot due to the curveball coming out of the hand at a slightly higher angle than the other pitches. See my previous PFX post about Lincecum for a more detailed report. His fastball tends to drift a little bit along with his 2 seamer. Funny thing is that his slider is the most centralized among them all. My 2nd chart is a zoom of the first chart, since so many of them overlap from far away. You can see that his fastball is released a little lower than all of his other pitches. Why is this? Could he be pacing himself with his pitches for his later innings?

You can see that there is some credence to this. It appears that his his pitches tail off slightly until around the 5th inning and then his velocity increases until the end, especially on his fastball. If this was an issue if him needing to warm up, his velocity wouldn't be that good but then would begin to rebound after the 2nd to 3rd inning, not the 5th.

Now let's look at the release point by start.

Looking at his release point by start his first 4 starts were the most towards the left of the chart and also near the top. They also weren't as clustered as the the last four starts. His release point is now more consistent in a nice baseball shape, not allowing anyone to get a good look at them. You can see that a little bit better on the macro scale by the chart on the right. See how the first several starts are really on the left and and the top of his release point zone. Especially note how the 5th and the 8th starts are so compact (the 5th start was the no-hitter).

If you look at his break and speed, you can see 4 distinct pitches.

His movement on those are slightly all over the place, but just like with the release point the last several starts are more focused and centralized within those clusters. As I say time and time again, release the ball in the same spot and knowing where the ball will go is extremely important in pitching. Now when you look at the vertical break per speed chart, some interesting things come up.

First, notice how there are a couple groups of results at certain speeds and movement. The resultant strikes (bright green) and the in play out (red) are grouped together. These are those pitches in which he knows where the ball is going. This is the true control. He knows exactly where the ball will end up.

With the 3rd chart in that series, focus on how much like the release points, his first 4 starts result in movement that is slower and also less movement.


With these two you can see that for the most part, the results were what they were supposed to do. Pitches down the middle, no matter what they are, are usually going to result in a base hit.

Going along with the result theme, let's look at what pitches resulted in which event.


You can see that the majority of each category are fastballs which is a good thing if you have a good fastball. He also mixes in his curve and changeup well getting many of his strikeouts on it.

The last chart that I want to focus on is his pitch selection breakdown by start:

		Start																Total
		1	%	2	%	3	%	4	%	5	%	6	%	7	%	8	%
Type	CH	0	0%	2	2%	11	14%	3	3%	7	6%	5	4%	6	6%	4	4%	38	5%
	CU	13	14%	17	17%	8	10%	11	12%	16	14%	15	12%	20	20%	26	26%	126	16%
	FA	74	79%	69	70%	46	60%	59	63%	71	64%	86	70%	69	68%	57	57%	531	67%
	FC	7	7%	9	9%	8	10%	16	17%	12	11%	15	12%	5	5%	12	12%	84	11%
	SL	0	0%	1	1%	4	5%	4	4%	5	5%	2	2%	2	2%	1	1%	19	2%
Total		94		98		77		93		111		123		102		100		798	100%

Nothing here really stands out to me. His pitch breakdown by percentage is basically consistent throughout. No large difference in approach jumps out at me.

Summary: I think that this is another piece to be filed under the evidence for release point and control being essential for a pitcher to succeed. It is important to note that release point is really only the end result of the pitchers mechanics from his toes to his fingertips. Any slight difference changes the release point and thus changes the movement, the pitch location, and the end result of getting an out or giving up a home run.

Lester looks to be completely healthy now showing no effects whatsoever from his battle with cancer. He is also showing that he has the stuff to be an above average major league pitcher.