JABO: Jon Lester Still Has Things Under Control
Last year’s Royals caused us to fall in love with stolen bases all over again. The AL Wild Card Game put their utility on display, and it was around that game the whole nation turned its attention to Jon Lester’s refusal to attempt any pickoffs. I probably don’t need to review this for you, so I’ll skip ahead. When Lester began this year with the Cubs, plenty of people were wondering whether he’d attempt more pickoffs than the zero he tried in 2014. He seemed like a pitcher who could be taken advantage of.
Flash back to the first month of the season. Lester threw over, all right. Twice. Sort of.
It got worse.
That second one went viral, if the use of that word doesn’t make you all itchy. Two attempts, with one bad throw, and one dreadful throw right after. Lester put the pickoff in his back pocket, not trying again until Thursday. Here’s what happened, if you aren’t already sick of watching the highlight on television:
I think this much is safe to say: Lester, pretty clearly, has a mental block. It’s possible this is all a fluke, but it’s highly unlikely, as it seems like Lester simply isn’t comfortable throwing the baseball in that direction. All right, that much we’ve suspected for a while. It’s also safe to say that the Royals sort of opened the floodgates. During last year’s regular season, Lester never threw over, but he allowed just 16 stolen bases. This year he’s up to a league-leading 35, after Thursday’s mayhem. The Brewers stole five times, four times in the third inning alone. No longer can Lester keep a runner close just by looking at him. This year, the runners are taking more chances. This year, Lester is letting them.
It’s easy to see the mistakes. It’s easy to see the three bad throws out of three attempted throws, and it’s easy to see the runners running wild. It’s easy to remember what happened to Lester in Kansas City. Given all this information, and given the rather extraordinary nature of the issue, it’s easy to figure this is a big deal. That the baserunners are out of control. To some extent, they absolutely are. But by far the thing that remains most important is Lester is really good at getting outs. The running game isn’t the factor it’s made out to be.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
This is a good article, and it does a good job of tamping down any concern of Lester’s inability to pickoff over a full season, but I would have liked to see at least a bit more discussion about the implications it can have on the playoffs.
The article even acknowledges the significance by talking about the wild-card game last year, but doesn’t chalk it up to being more than “anything random can happen in a game.”
Sure, Lester may have only given up 6 runs to batters that have stolen a base, and maybe only 3 or 4 are a result of his lack of a move. But runners are succeeding against him at an 81% rate, and if the Cubs make the dance and draw a quick or aggressive team, it’s totally feasible that they could snag 5 or 6 extra bases off of him.
Yes, the effect of his lack of ability is probably null over the aggregate of a full season, but in a high-leverage spot like the playoffs, those extra runs that get washed out in the noise of 162 games become a whole lot more significant.
i felt he stated that it can have an effect on a game. however it can also have no effect if lester limits the baserunners to begin with. most playoff teams dont have too much of a speed factor to worry about, the pirates are the only n.l playoff team even above average. even after last year he’s still been pretty nasty in the playoffs.
I’m pretty sure that the stolen base success rate is close to 81% off of just about everybody who doesn’t play for St. Louis
it is a good article. But I am trying to wrap my head around how stealing plus good baserunning can contribute significantly to a batter’s value (and controlling a running game is important to a catcher’s value also), but being really bad at controlling the running game does not matter much for a pitcher’s value (at least his strand rate).
The highest non-Billy Hamilton BsR this season is Kris Bryant’s 6.1. Last year, Ben Revere and Dee Gordon were the only players to top 10 and neither made it to 11. Only the most extreme players in the game get more than a rounding error of their WAR from BsR. Furthermore, a significant number of the baserunners a pitcher will allow in a season are guys like Billy Butler, David Ortiz, and Victor Martinez–guys who can take insane leads and take off on every pitch but still won’t do any damage.
I’m a Dodger fan and I remember people at one point throwing a fit about how Kershaw was being taught not to control the running game and how that would ruin him. Not only did that not happen, but the guy “teaching” him that was this dude named Greg Maddux.
good point on the BsR. I had not realized how little variance there was.
I understand the point this article makes, but it seems to me there’s potential damage beyond what’s seen to date if and when teams further exploit Lester’s problem throwing to bases.
I was at this game yesterday and here’s what I saw beyond what’s mentioned in this article:
* On the one bunt back to Lester, his throw to first bounced perhaps 10-15 feet in front of 1B Rizzo. While he got the out in this case, I can’t help but wonder why teams don’t bunt right back to Lester more often.
* The Brewers’ Lucroy, who is no particular threat to steal, was getting a huge lead off first without ever drawing a throw. If nothing else, the likelihood of turning a double play is reduced while the chance of the runner getting an extra base on a hit is increased when runners get such a huge lead.
* Before the play where Segura stole third while Lester held the ball, I’d estimate Segura’s lead off second base to be a good 30 feet without ever drawing a throw. It seems the chance of stealing the base or advancing an extra base on a ball in play greatly increases if and when teams begin to exploit this further.
I can’t help but wonder if teams wouldn’t be successful having a runner on third attempting a delayed steal of home on the catcher’s return throw to Lester.
And I can’t help but wonder if teams won’t begin exploiting Lester’s problems throwing to bases even more in a playoff setting, where every game matters and runs are typically harder to come by. Doing so would be similar to basketball teams repeatedly intentionally fouling a terrible free throw shooter in playoff games that are often close and matter more.
“I can’t help but wonder” …
It IS kind of fascinating that more exploitation of this hasn’t happened – bunt attempts, steals…in a “why don’t they hit away from the shift” sort of way. Even MORESO during the regular season when teams may feel they have more slack to try something funky like that. I was looking back at some of Lester’s recent starts, and saw he’d lost to the Phillies (or his team did, he got a ND as it went extras):
http://espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?id=350724116
And noticed this:
BASERUNNING
SB: Revere 2 (24, 2nd base off Rondón/Ross, 2nd base off Lester/Ross); Hernández (13, 2nd base off Lester/Ross)
Picked Off: Hernández (2nd base by Ross)
Makes you wonder if people ARE trying SOME – but the Cubs (and Ross) are finding ways of discouraging that – like the catcher picking someone off 2nd.
To your first point, you would think that players like Billy Hamilton and Jean Segura – NL Central opponents who are fast and not much of hitters – would try regularly bunting the ball back at Lester. They and similar players are also, of course, threats to steal once they reach base.
Regarding your second point, check out the Grantland link posted by MGL below. That Grantland piece makes the point that, based on simulations, it’s likely that players who don’t steal (but are able to take extra bases on hits due to huge leads) could have more impact for run-scoring against Lester than stolen bases.
One has to figure that Theo knew about Lester’s “problem” prior to signing him to the fat contract. It obviously didn’t appear to have reduced his value. I can imagine Rickett’s reaction must have been somewhat incredulous, giving that kind of money and years to a guy who can’t be trusted in a big game due to an inability to control the running game.
I’m not seeing any real analysis here regarding the theoretical cost given the average number of SB attempts and success rate expected against Lester and the theoretical base running cost (advancing extra bases on hits and outs and staying out of the GDP) with larger leads.
I believe that it is on the order of .25 runs per 9 innings, maybe more, which is enough to turn him from a #1 starter into a #2 starter. Whether you want to call that “small” or “large” is up to you, but I would definitely not call it insignificant.
For a good actual analysis of the possible or probable cost of Lester’s problem, see this article: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/mlb-jon-lester-chicago-cubs-pickoff-aversion-simulation/
This seems like a very small illustration of teams being slow to take advantage of unconventional opportunities to improve their outcomes. In a world of totally rational actors every team would be pushing this hard enough to reach some sort of equilibrium, which surely would involve Lester making token throws to first to keep players from getting the ridiculous leads they should take if they KNOW he won’t throw over.
But teams are being stupid, to put it mildly. Lester has 4 CS in his last five games. I went and looked at all his CS this year: twice at 3B, one full count strikeout, and six times where they caught a guy who had a normal lead and didn’t have the huge jump you might hope for going on first movement.
The third time the Cardinals saw him they showed how defenseless he is. Carpenter reached in the first, each pitch taking a bigger lead until on the fourth pitch Rizzo called timeout to talk about what McCarver described as a . Still no throw and Carpenter stole on the fifth pitch with a . Lester was really good that day, so they didn’t have another baserunner until Peralta in the seventh. He failed to steal because he’s a bad baserunner (literally the worst in MLB this year according to FG!). Then Heyward and Wong each stole on the first pitch, without a throw, in one case on a pitchout. Neither broadcast showed either of their leads/jumps, probably because it would have violated FCC decency regulations.
If every team did this to Lester he would be forced to change. But if most continue to treat him as “merely” having the worst move to first in MLB (like the simulations in the Grantland article), then he won’t change. The Cardinals and a few other smart teams will then have an advantage that will really matter when it counts.
I will be curious to see how aggressive the Cardinals are against Lester during the two games he’s set to pitch against them in September. If their lead in the division is comfortable and nobody else is abusing him the way they have, it might make sense for them to keep it in their back pocket in case they see him in the playoffs. But even then they should take bigger and bigger leads just to see if he’ll ever throw over.
I know how MGL hates RE24, but turning 80%+ of 1– into -2- and 1-3 into -23 adds up to a fair amount of RE, even for Lester, who admittedly limits the frequency of those situations better than most. Among other things it means in a big game he really won’t be able to get DPs to help him out of jams unless he walks the bases loaded.
Darn, sorry I messed up the links. There’s missing > but they show the leads Carpenter had (first “twenty feet” and similar on the pitch he ran on).
You raise an interesting question of whether teams will get more aggressive – and successfully aggressive – the more times that they see Lester. So far this year, only 4 teams have faced Lester more than once – the Cardinals, (3 times), Reds (3 times), Brewers (2 times), and Mets (2 times).
The Cardinals, to take one example, have a total SB success rate of 6/8 against Lester in those 3 games. The Cardinals, for whatever reason, had greater success the 1st and 3rd times that they saw Lester – 0 SB’s and 1 CS in the 2nd game. A handful of teams have piled up SB’s against Lester – Cincinnati (7/7 in a total of 3 games), Milwaukee (6/7 in a total of 2 games), Colorado (4/5 in 1 game), and Arizona (3/3 in 1 game). A few others have gone 2/2 in a single game against him.
It seems logical that opposing players and coaches could take some time to adapt to taking huge leads on Lester, because his inability/unwillingness to throw to bases is so extreme. I also find it interesting that the Grantland/Diamond Mine simulation analysis concluded that runners with large leads taking an extra base on hits likely has as much of an impact as SB’s if all runners get ultra-aggressive. I don’t think that analysis included Cubs catchers making more pick-off attempts, which you’d expect as an adjustment from the Cubs if every runner started taking massive leads on Lester.