CHICAGO -- In the days when Josh Beckett and Jon Lester were teammates, Beckett demonstrated to Lester how the geometry of a ball field could be a tool in maintaining his delivery. When Beckett played catch, he could use a foul line or the edge of a warning track as a point of reference, standing at the line to create a right angle in his delivery, and from pitch to pitch, monitor whether his mechanics were properly aligned.
Lester, at the outset of his career, absorbed this lesson and its importance. To this day, he asks groundskeepers in spring training to draw straight lines for him on a side field, to work with when he's throwing, to reinforce habits -- apparently with great success.
According to numbers dug out from Baseball Prospectus by ESPN researcher Paul Hembekides, Lester has almost always had the most consistent release point in baseball over the past five seasons, among all pitchers who have thrown enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.
The release distance, as defined by Baseball Prospectus, indicates how far apart back-to-back pitches are released -- the exact amount of space between pitches when each is released. Lester has ranked first in average release distance in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018; he ranks third in the early part of 2019.
Lester had not been aware of this particular metric before a conversation at his locker Saturday, but acknowledged immediately the implications of the statistics. The ability to repeat a delivery and a release point is among the most important traits in a pitcher, for command and for deception, because a wide variable in the place where the ball leaves the hand can betray the identity of the pitch for the hitter -- a telltale clue. Lester throws fastballs, cutters, changeups and curveballs, and his consistent point of release helps to disguise them.
"That's pretty cool," Lester said. "I think that's probably something where early on, at age 15-16, I kind of started getting some actual coaching and really work on mechanics, and repeating mechanics. That carried over to the minor leagues, and I had some great coaches in the minor leagues who helped to keep pushing me to repeat [the delivery]. That's a testament to those guys to keep hammering that home to me and make it important. That's probably a reason why I've been able to dodge being hurt, a little bit."
Lester, who starts for the Chicago Cubs against the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday Night Baseball, has some checkpoints in his delivery that he monitors. Drawing up his right knee and coiling over the pitching rubber properly, before driving toward home plate, rather than spinning open in his mechanics too early. The lines he asks the groundskeepers to spray for him provide a visual reminder of how his body is moving, where he needs to land, where he needs to drive through.
"The coolest for me is with all of these different camera angles, the one I really like to see is from behind home plate," he said. "Down low, catcher's perspective, because one of the things I always worry about is showing the ball a little bit too early [to the hitter]. You get too rotational, and the ball pops out [visually for the hitter]."
And when he or any other pitcher does this, the hitter has a clear view of the ball and how he's holding it in his hand, with the grip tipping off the batter about what is being thrown. "I always like seeing that [camera angle]," Lester said, "making sure that you're hiding the ball and hitters aren't getting a good look at it."
Lester, 35, is driving steadily toward the benchmarks that can define a Hall of Fame résumé. One hundred seventy-nine wins, meaning he's closing in on 200; 2,223 strikeouts, with 2,500 looming; 2,398 innings. The adjusted ERA+ for his career is 123, the same as Juan Marichal and Mike Mussina; Mussina will be making a speech in Cooperstown, New York, later this summer, and Marichal was inducted in 1983. Lester also has performed spectacularly in the postseason, which will help his Hall case.
But as Lester explained, he hasn't yet reached the stage of his career when he's thinking about legacy. Lester has loved pitching against CC Sabathia, who recently celebrated and enjoyed career strikeout No. 3,000 -- and that makes sense, because Sabathia has announced this is his final season. Now is the time for Sabathia, 38, to look at his career with perspective.
Lester, on the other hand, doesn't know how much longer he is going to pitch. He has another year on the six-year deal he signed with the Cubs before the 2015 season, and there is an option for 2021 built into his contract.
"If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I probably would've said I wasn't going to make it to the sixth year," he said. "But this last year and this year, I've felt a lot better physically, recovering a lot better. I feel good and am still getting people out. I don't want to go out there and be a liability for my team, just because I just want to pitch. I don't want to be selfish. The biggest thing for me is that I'm effective. I'll just play it by ear and see."
He noted through a smile that for now, his benchmarks are passing old friends on career leaderboards. When Lester got career win No. 139, it earned him the right to text Beckett, who had 138 wins. Lester needs nine more wins to catch longtime teammate John Lackey.
"Right now, that's my benchmark," he said. "We always said that when you catch somebody in wins, you can talk more smack about them."
News from around the majors
The Brewers have won eight of their past 12 games against the Cubs, and are 24-17 overall after Saturday's 15-inning loss. They have already used 21 pitchers this season, with nine different pitchers taking starts. It used to be that some teams would sketch out their starting rotations for many weeks and even months in advance, but the Brewers have so many variables in play that their long-range pitch plan isn't so long range.
"We do try to stay flexible," general manager David Stearns texted. "I'd say we're probably in pencil about a week out, but we understand things can change. We generally try to stay about a week out so we can map out [the bullpen structure] appropriately."
How to best use Josh Hader is one of the many factors the Brewers weigh. He has demonstrated beyond any question that he is much more effective when rested, so Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell works to identify the moments when Hader's potential value is at its highest, while understanding that Hader probably won't be available on back-to-back days. Additionally, the Brewers recently used Adrian Houser as an "opener" before Freddy Peralta came on in relief, because Peralta struggled early in his starts this season.
• A few years ago, the Astros' staff began to talk to Jose Altuve about his hyperaggressiveness, and how it worked against him. The coaches didn't want him or expect him to turn into a walk machine, but they felt that if he was just a little bit more disciplined -- if he forced pitchers to throw more strikes -- then he would give himself a better chance to excel. And that happened: Altuve went from great to even better and won the 2017 American League MVP Award.
The same sort of adjustment might be needed by the Cubs' Javier Baez and Willson Contreras. So far this season, that pair ranks No. 1 and No. 2 in the big leagues in being thrown the highest percentage of pitches outside of the strike zone -- Baez has seen just 34.6 percent of pitches in the zone, Contreras 35.4 percent.
And that probably isn't going to change until Baez and Contreras show more discipline, because from the pitchers' perspective, the players aren't providing a reason to throw stuff in the zone.
• The Red Sox have won the past eight games caught by Sandy Leon, and nine of the 11 he has started since being recalled from the minors April 16.
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. entered play Saturday with only six hits in 11 games, one extra-base hit and a batting average of .146. But the Jays have liked his plate discipline so far, believing he's having good at-bats, and figure it eventually will translate into better results. He has generated an extraordinarily high rate of ground balls, which can be read as a clue about the anxiety he has experienced in these high-scrutiny first days of his much-anticipated career. A typical ground ball rate would be something in the range of 1.1 grounders per fly ball, but Guerrero is more than three times that so far, at 3.5-to-1, suggesting that he's rolling over pitches in his swing, rather than staying behind the ball.
• Kathie Lester, mother of Jon Lester, worked on road crews for Pierce County in Washington state, an area which includes Mount Rainier National Park.
"She drove dump trucks, dug culverts, ditches, cleaned road ways, ran asphalt," Lester said. "She did that stuff for 30 years, as a woman in that profession ... tough."
At a time when Jon pitched for the Red Sox, Kathie had double carpal-tunnel surgery to repair the wear and tear of her years of labor and to get her back to work. Jon and his wife, Farrah, had just had their first child, Hudson, and Jon told Kathie, "Mom, you need to retire; you're not going to be able to hold your grandkids."
Kathie told him, "I can't. I can't let them win. I have to get my pension."
She needed 30 years of service to receive the pension. Jon, of course, had already made millions of dollars as a pitcher.
"I told her, 'Mom, I'll give you the extra $1,000 a month or whatever it is,'" Jon Lester recalled. "'I just want you to be able to be healthy and help us deal with the kids.'"
Kathie responded: "I can't." And she would go back to work, until she achieved her pension. Then, and only then, did Kathie Lester retire, her competitiveness and work ethic wholly intact.
Baseball Tonight Podcast
Friday: Mike Trout is a huge fan of baseball, and he has some observations and stories about a lot of his peers -- Jose Altuve, Mookie Betts, Joey Votto, etc.; Karl Ravech on the fate of the baseball involved in Albert Pujols' career RBI No. 2,000; Ron Rapoport, the author of a new Ernie Banks biography, on the two sides of Mr. Cub.
Thursday: Keith Law discusses his first mock draft and the question of foreign substances in the game; Sarah Langs plays The Numbers Game; and a great conversation with the Brewers' Jhoulys Chacin, about a major adjustment he made in pitching, and about the troubles in his homeland of Venezuela.
Wednesday: Tyler Glasnow of the Rays on the conversation with Blake Snell that turned around his career, and his two very unusual tattoos; David Schoenfield on Mike Fiers' no-hitter, and Dallas Keuchel's decision; Paul Hembekides with stats that reflect the 2019 dominance of the Cubs' defense.
Tuesday: Boog Sciambi on the Padres' emerging star pitcher, Chris Paddack, and the difficult Stephen Strasburg-like situation San Diego might face later in the year; we go negative on the Marlins and the Mets; Jesse Rogers on the Cubs; Sarah Langs brings the numbers.
Monday: A conversation with Cubs manager Joe Maddon; Tim Kurkjian on the Cubs and Red Sox, and a horror movie quiz; Todd Radom with cap talk, and our weekly trivia.