Red Sox Diaries

Friday night's 5-4 loss in Seattle highlighted the struggles of another high-profile player key to Boston's World Series chances. After throwing a no-hitter and emerging as a reliable ace last year, lefty Jon Lester is off to the slowest start of his young career.

The 25-year-old gave up five runs in 5.2 innings against the Mariners, raising his ERA to 6.51 for the season. Opponents are hitting .312 against Lester with 10 home runs (only four short of his total during the 2008 season). He has been charged with the loss in four of his eight outings after dropping just eight of his first 60 regular season appearances.

Lester's biggest problems so far have come when trying to work through trouble. He has been especially prone to the big inning this season, allowing three runs or more in a single frame five times. In 2008, at least three runners scored in an inning against him eight times (including playoffs). But it was an issue that got more pronounced as the season progressed--this occurred in six of his final 20 starts (including playoffs), including in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series against Tampa Bay.

What makes Lester's poor performance especially puzzling is that his strikeout rate is higher than it has ever been. He has fanned 54 batters in 47 innings, an average of 10.3 per nine. His previous best ratio was 7.1 K/9 in 2007. He also had two solid starts against the New York Yankees.

Now, Lester's sky-high opponents' batting average figure is mainly a product of their astronomical BABIP of .392--as that regresses to the mean, his ERA should drop. His FIP of 4.78--about a run and a half lower than his ERA--takes that into account and rewards him for his bigger strikeout totals (while also punishing him for his increasing tendency to give up the gopher ball).

The baseline statistics (namely, record and ERA) might make it seem like Lester has been pitching worse than he actually is, but he still is not performing at anywhere near the level that the Red Sox need him to. Lester's velocity and strikeout totals suggest that aftereffects from throwing substantially more innings last season than he had in any other professional season is not at the root of his issues, which is a good sign.

But perhaps no anecdote sums up Lester's series of subpar starts better than this: Ichiro Suzuki had his first multi-home run game in almost four years on Friday, going deep in the fifth and sixth innings. Wondering about when else he has performed this feat? The last time was in a 3-2 win against the Cleveland Indians and C.C. Sabathia (back then he still had the periods in between his initials) on July 30, 2005. He also went yard twice off of Tanyon Sturtze in a 4-3 loss to Tampa Bay on July 13, 2002, and against Kevin Appier in a 8-4 win over the Los Angeles Angels (and I'm pretty sure they still had the "of Anaheim" qualifier then) on June 17, 2003. To put it in context, you are far less likely to see Ichiro hit two homers than you are to see David Ortiz steal a base (10 swipes in his career). Speaking of Ortiz, it REALLY shows you how much he is floundering when even Ichiro is knocking them over the fence. (A quick aside to this aside: bravo to manager Terry Francona for finally sitting him down for a series--it's a little late, and he still should have been dropped in the order before now, but unfortunately it's the right move.)

We should have a better idea after Lester's next few starts about whether these five weeks have been a fluke, or if there is legitimate reason for concern. The Red Sox can't afford it to be the latter.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

The first week of the season did not go as planned for many Red Sox fans. If you had told me that the Red Sox would be in dead last in the AL East after the first week of the season, I would have laughed in your face and asked you to put your money where your mouth is. But here we are, a week into the season and the Red Sox are DEAD LAST! AGHHHH! Say it ain’t so!

Okay okay, lets not panic. There is still a bunch of baseball left but some things from the first week concern me. The first is the disappearance of David Ortiz. Once upon a time the hefty lefty was one of the most feared hitters in baseball. Now Papi looks like just another older designated hitter who, once the shift is on, can’t buy a hit. After a wrist injury limited his production last season, more of the same is here in 2009. It’s sad to say, but don’t expect Big Papi to touch 25 homers or even 90 RBI this season. On that note, do enjoy his presence at the plate. It may be the last season you see him in a Red Sox uniform.

Another early season performance that bothers me is that of Jon Lester. The cancer survivor couldn’t survive a start against the A’s? Lester let Nomar Garciaparra go deep on him and that was after he had already given the game away in the second inning. Lester didn’t walk anybody, which is a sign that good things could be around the corner, but keeping pace in the AL East would be easier if Lester can regain his 2008 form. I was upset when the Sox passed on Johan Santana, but they saw potential in Lester and he rewarded them last season. Pay close attention to Lester’s next start. He is going to want to rectify the past two starts and he might press.

With two more winnable games at Oakland, the Sox have the day off on Thursday and then get the Orioles at Fenway for four games. In the meantime, if you happen to see the Papi of old anywhere, tell him the Sox need him for another title run. ---Nick Barone.

One of last season's most exciting developments was Jon Lester's emergence as a front-of-the-rotation starter. He had been one of Boston's most hyped prospects--they valued him so much that they refused to include him in the Josh Beckett trade after the 2005 season (but parted with Hanley Ramirez, one of the most exciting young players in the game, and Anibal Sanchez, who threw a no-hitter) and wouldn't deal him in a package for Johan Santana.

He had a strong start to his rookie campaign as a 22-year-old in 2006, winning his first five decisions and giving up two runs or fewer in each of his first eight starts. But Lester's last seven outings were much less impressive--a 7.75 ERA and only two starts of longer than five innings. Boston shut him down prematurely that season after doctors discovered that he had a treatable form of cancer called non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and he returned in late July of the next season to post a 4-0 record down the stretch and win the clinching game of the World Series. Through parts of two professional seasons, Lester's career record was 12-2 including playoffs.

But that record was pretty misleading if you looked at it closely--in 11 of his 26 professional starts, Lester gave up 4 or more earned runs. Yet the offense bailed him out time and time again, and he had a 2-2 record in those games (rather remarkable when you think about it). His strikeout-to-walk ratio also hinted at trouble, hovering around 1.50, and upon his return in 2007 he served up 10 home runs in 61.1 innings.

Of course, he was also very young and was coming back from cancer, so maybe that analysis is too harsh. Anyway, the point is that last season was the first time Lester really lived up to his potential and showed why he was held in such high regard. He also had an 11-1 record and 2.49 ERA at Fenway Park, which is famously difficult on lefties because of the Green Monster.

There was obviously a lot of positives that came out of last season for Lester--the no-hitter in mid-May against Kansas City, a homer rate that dropped by more than half, and so on--but I saw two slightly troublesome trends: a somewhat low strikeout rate (just 6.5 Ks per 9 innings, versus an 8.3 rate in his minor league career) and a workload that was far greater than any he had previously handled.

One of Sports Illustrated's baseball columnists, Tom Verducci, went into the second point in detail yesterday. He posted his annual report of pitchers who are at risk of the Year After Effect--basically, the idea that pitchers who throw significantly more than they are accustomed to are more likely to have injury problems the next year. Who topped Verducci's list? Jon Lester, whose 237 innings last year represented a jump of greater than 50 percent from his previous career high.

In the piece (which you can read here), Verducci says that, of the 24 pitchers who he has flagged over the past three years, 16 of them spent time on the DL the following season. Only one stayed healthy all year and lowered his ERA.

So, how will Lester's arm hold up? Verducci mentions that Lester might be safer than most, since he's older than most of the guys on the list and at 6-foot-2 is a pretty big guy. He also quotes Boston's pitching coach, John Farrell, who said that Lester was showing no signs of breaking down and in fact had better velocity this spring than he did a year ago. But on the other hand, Lester threw 100+ pitches in 21 of his 37 starts last season, and only six times did he throw fewer than 90. A lot of his outings were in high-pressure situations, too.

Out of curiosity, I checked out who baseball-reference.com listed as Lester's most similar counterpart at this stage in his career (check out an explanation of how Similarity Scores work here.) It was Tim Hudson, who threw about 80 more innings when he was 24 than he did when he was 23--a similar margin to Lester's 24-year-old season over his previous career high. Hudson proceeded to throw even more innings the next year and made at least 27 starts in each of the following seven seasons.

Hopefully that bodes well for Lester in 2009 and beyond. Then again, Hudson did end his streak of durability after undergoing Tommy John surgery to repair his elbow last season. Red Sox management has to proceed with caution.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)