It’s no secret. Jon Lester is on the short-list of the best left-handers in the game.
That lesson was reinforced in a backwards sort of way on Wednesday, when the left-hander emerged with his eighth win of the season in the Red Sox’ 6-2 win over the Diamondbacks. (Recap.) Lester was struggling with his mechanics and hence his pitch location. Fastballs meant to get in on right-handed hitters tailed back out over the plate, most notably when Justin Upton slammed a heater onto the Mass Pike. He had imperfect feel for the break of his cutter, hitting a pair of batters with it.
Yet Lester proved capable of adapting, competing and ultimately shutting down the Diamondbacks. He navigated through seven innings, allowing two runs and four hits while striking out seven and walking three.
Of particular note was the fact that, in a bases-loaded, one-out jam, he relied heavily on his changeup (typically his fourth-best pitch) against a pair of righties to record his biggest outs of the night: a strikeout of Rusty Ryal and a pop-up by Chris Snyder to end the threat.
“It was really tough for him tonight. He was battling against himself,” said catcher Victor Martinez. “That shows you what kind of pitcher he is. He was able to find a way and make pitches to get out of jams and keep us in the game. He was able to give seven really strong innings for us. That was huge.”
Of course, such performances have become entirely routine for Lester. With his best stuff, he is unhittable. Without it, he still has enough weapons available that he can control the game and submit an excellent outing.
That notion is reflected in the fact that Lester has seven starts this year in which he has allowed four or fewer hits in six or more innings, tied for the most such games in the majors this year. So, too, does an eight-game winning streak -- the longest by a Sox left-hander since Roger Moret won a dozen straight starts from 1971-73 -- attest to that sort of mastery.
With the emergence of a changeup that Lester describes as “10-fold better” than it used to be, the left-hander now has four above-average pitches that elicit swings and misses: his mid-90s fastball, a hellacious cutter, a sharp curve and his new friend, the change. It is an arsenal that few in the game possess, and that makes it fair to wonder whether Lester is the best left-hander in the game.
There are a few pitchers who may one day make a push for that consideration. Rays lefty David Price, certainly, has shown the potential to enter the conversation, but his success is too new to consider him a standard-setter. There are other lefties (Ricky Romero, Clayton Kershaw, Francisco Liriano) with tremendous stuff but for whom success remains too green to consider them among the game’s top southpaws.
The game’s Mt. Rushmore of left-handers currently counts precisely four members: Yankees ace CC Sabathia (2007 AL Cy Young), Johan Santana of the Twins (2004 and 2006 AL Cy Young), Mariners lefty Cliff Lee (2008 AL Cy Young) and Lester.
Those are the four pitchers who, over the past three years, have managed to dominate their opponents with a consistency unlike any other lefties in the game. Lester is not merely the caddy for that group -- he is, say those who have played with other members of that quartet, as good as any of them.
Martinez has perhaps the best vantage point for comparison, having also caught Sabathia and Lee while with the Indians.
“I don’t think it’s fair to compare those guys,” said Victor Martinez. “[But] definitely, they’re the three top left-handers in the game.”
David Ortiz played with Santana at the beginning of the left-hander’s career in Minnesota, and has had the unenviable task of facing Sabathia, Santana and Lee quite a bit.
“They’re all different pitchers. All of them have different stuff,” said David Ortiz,” said Ortiz. “He’s right there with all of them.”
Boof Bonser, Santana’s teammate in Minnesota from 2006-07, described Lester’s cutter as being the equivalent of Santana’s changeup in concluding that the two hurlers are “about the same” in terms of skill.
Based on the numbers, it would be hard to deny Lester’s place among that group. Since the start of the 2008 season, he ranks third among big league lefties in wins (39), first in win-loss percentage (.709), second in strikeouts (473), fourth in ERA (3.27) and fifth in innings (505 2/3).
That resume, moreover, has been forged entirely while pitching in the American League East. All three of his colleagues have spent significant swaths of time in the comparatively less menacing environs of the National League, and both Sabathia and Lee also did some of their damage while pitching in the AL Central.
No matter the standard, Lester is at or near the top of the heap when assessing the top lefties in the game. That, in turn, makes it noteworthy how Lester is distinct from his small peer group.
Of the top four lefties in the game, only Lester does not have a Cy Young award on his shelf. But his teammates see too many similarities between the 26-year-old and his peer group to think that recognition as the best pitcher in the league can be too far behind.
“He’s just one of the young pitchers, he’s learning. It’s a learning process. He’s just figuring things out,” said Ortiz. “No question [he has Cy Young stuff]. He will [get one]. He will. Soon, he will.”