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Today, I’ll be projecting the expected pitches, strikes and strikeouts for Jon Lester tonight against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Lester is one of three pitchers (Luis Severino, David Price) in the “Awesemo.com Presents: $1,000,000 Perfect Line Bonus + $6000 GTD – Style & Profile ($2,400 to 1st!)“.
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Jon Lester
The matchup against the Dodgers is not going to be a cakewalk for Lester, as there are 7 projected righties in this lineup, and most of them are players that I respect. When you look at Lester’s numbers against right-handed hitters (18.7% K-rate, 3.20 BB/9, 4.60 xFIP, 36.8% hard-hit rate), it’s hard to imagine him having a ton of success against this LAD lineup.
Lester just faced the Dodgers 6 days ago at home, recording a season-high 119 pitches, 70 strikes, and one strikeout.
As you can see in the image above, Lester averages almost 98 pitches, just over 61 strikeouts, and 4.7 strikeouts per start. We don’t have to worry about projecting outs in this contest, but because of the abundance of righties in the Dodgers lineup, I am projecting this to be a below-average outing in terms of strikeouts, but assuming he doesn’t get completely blowup, he could easily reach 100 pitches once again, as he has in each of his last 4 starts, and 65+ strikes.
My prediction for Lester is that he again struggles to rack up the strikeouts against the Dodgers, but gets deep enough into the game to get above his averages in both pitches and strikes, resulting in 104 pitches, 67 strikes, and 3 strikeouts.
