Tuesday night’s Jon Lester vs. James Shields match-up is everything we could ask for, from baseball’s (relatively) new postseason format. Every inning, every batter, every pitch can be the difference between survival and elimination — and those individual pitches are among the most interesting aspects of this game.
Earlier, I introduced Pitch Value Rating, a statistic I developed that ranks the best individual pitches in baseball. In this match-up, Shields has the best pitch according to the methodology: his change-up ranked as the 15th-best pitch in the majors, with a 156 PVR, meaning it was 56 percent better than the average pitch this season.
This bodes well for Big Game James, as the A’s ranked 22nd in the majors with just a .346 slugging percentage against change-ups this season. However, even though the lefty’s change-up ranks higher overall, it’s arguable that Lester might had best overall “stuff” in the majors this season.
Yes, I said it.
Here is Lester's three-pitch repertoire (leaving aside his change-up, which he threw just 2.8 percent of the time), along with each pitch's corresponding overall ranking and PVR...
| Rank | Pitch Type | PVR |
|---|---|---|
| 26 | cutter | 151 |
| 90 | fastball | 137 |
| 93 | curveball | 137 |
Only one other pitcher had three pitches in the top 100 PVR’s this year, and that was Stephen Strasburg, whose change ranked 38th, curve ranked 57th, and fastball ranked 96th. Lester's obviously got a great cutter, but looking specifically for that pitch will be dangerous for the Royals.
Still, this year Lester threw that pitch 30 percent of the time, the most he ever has in his career. The only cut fastball ranked higher than Lester’s was that of Phil Hughes, at 12th overall (161 PVR). Hughes made four starts against the Royals this season, and his divisional rivals performed even worse than the rest of the league against his best pitch.
They slugged .267 in 33 overall plate appearances that ended with a cutter, compared to a .397 mark against Hughes’ other pitches. The rest of the league? They slugged .335 against the 12th-best pitch in baseball this season.
Postscript: As you might have noticed on the introduction to PVR post, I regrettably made a huge error in running the numbers on the first go-around, which has since been corrected. Therefore, all of the PVR data I cited above is inaccurate.
Jon Lester’s cutter is actually ranked as the 61st-best pitch this season (132 PVR), even behind his curveball, which ranks 46th (135 PVR). Still, he used his cut fastball the most in Tuesday’s wild card game (34.2% of the time) according to Brooks Baseball, and threw it effectively — getting strikes 63.2% of the time with the pitch.
Also, Lester does not have three pitches in the top 100 — his curve-cutter-fastball combination ranks 46th, 61st, and 149th. AL Cy Young candidate Chris Sale is the only pitcher with three pitches in the top 100: his change-up (39th), fastball (87th), and slider (98th).
James Shields’ change-up was also grossly overrated by the errant rankings, as it actually ranks 86th in the majors with a PVR of 127. While it was still an above-average pitch this season, it wasn’t necessarily effective on Tuesday. For one, Brandon Moss’ first-inning homer that gave the A’s a 2-0 lead was off of an 0-1 change-up. And, Shields threw the pitch with two strikes eight times in the game, and only got a strikeout once (12.5% of the time vs. his 17.6% mark in the regular season).
Jordan Wallach was a researcher at MLB Network in the summers of 2013 and 2014, where he worked on the channel's sabermetrically-slanted studio show, MLB Now. He is currently a sophomore at Stanford University, where he intends to study Chemical Engineering. He's on the Twitter if you need him.
