Cutting it with Jon Lester

Jon Lester's cutter is his most valuable pitch.  Fangraphs has it at 17.9 runs above average in 2010.

Jon Lester's 2010 Cutter (Click to enlarge)He keeps it away from lefties and in on righties.  Lester only gets into trouble when occasionally leaving one up in the zone. His cutter was almost equally effective against both righties and lefties, although he obviously faces far more RHB as a left-handed starter. Jon Lester's 2010 Cutter

	P	AVG	OBP	SLG	K%	BB%	wOBA
vs. Left	187	.179	.191	.209	36.2%	1.4%	.177
vs. Right	541	.188	.270	.248	31.1%	7.4%	.244
Total	728	.185	.245	.235	32.7%	5.5%	.223
Expected	-	.203	.296	.291	32.9%	10.7%	.274

The cutter slightly outperformed it's expected value last season, but the inflated xBB% is probably more an indication of how good his cutter really is as an out pitch.

Lester's fastball has begun to give him trouble over the last couple years, and we'll dive into that in a future post.