D

About Last Night: Boston’s Mr. Lester Teaches Rangers Mr. Holland An Opus About Pitching

D-tails: Red Sox 8, Rangers 1
• Boxscore, Standings, Depot game blog
• Notes: Closing in on hits record, Vizquel to get start; Francisco still unavailable

BOSTON - Getting pulled in the fifth inning Saturday night wasn’t all bad news for Rangers starter Derek Holland.

For example, it offered him more opportunity to sit back and watch Jon Lester.

In a lot of ways Holland is currently a Lester starter kit. He is young, left-handed and throws hard. And while there are differences in their repertoires – most significantly Lester uses a cut fastball and Holland doesn’t – there are two important lessons that could be learned Saturday from Lester’s dominant 8-1 two-hit, complete game win over the Rangers.

The short list:

• Get ahead of the hitters.

• Don’t rely just on the fastball, no matter how good it may be.

Applying those two simple rules, Lester flirted with a perfect game, but instead settled for a complete game that was one of the most efficient high strikeout games of the last decade. Lester needed just 106 pitches to finish off his 11-strikeout game. In the past decade, only three AL pitchers have had complete games of more than 10 strikeouts with fewer pitches.

“He flat out threw a great game, maybe the best I’ve seen against us,” said 3B Michael Young. “We got no hit two years ago by Mark Buehrle and he hit every spot he had to. Lester just had dominant stuff.”

And Young was the guy who had both of the Rangers hits.

It should be pointed out here that Lester, who like Holland made his major league debut at the age of 22, was making his 71^st big league start on Saturday. Holland was making No. 3. So, Lester should be a little ahead of Holland on the learning curve. But that was the extra benefit of Holland’s first start against another young power lefty. When he was done, he could observe and analyze how Lester put together such an outing.

At the heart of Lester’s performance was his ability to get ahead of the Rangers. His first pitch of the game was taken for a strike by Ian Kinsler. The first trip through the lineup, he threw seven first pitch strikes and by the time the perfect game talk was starting to heat up, he’d gotten ahead of 14 of 18 hitters through six innings.

“He pounded the strike zone,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, citing managers favorite cliché for strike-throwing. “He spread the plate out so much by coming arm side early – fastball away to right-handers. I think in the seventh inning, he went to a 3-and-1 count and it was maybe the second time all night he was down late in the count. He was ahead and had a lot of different ways to attack hitters. That’s tough on good hitters. They are trying to take something away from each at-bat. He had a lot of ways to go after guys tonight.”

Holland on the other hand, threw first pitch strikes to just four of the Red Sox hitters the first time through the lineup. That offered the patient Red Sox more opportunity to see what he had to offer and forced him to pitch on the defensive.

“He was going right after hitters,” Holland said. “First pitch strikes is something I need to do better and that kind of got away from me.”

Getting ahead in the count, combined with the Rangers aggressive approach, made Lester’s other pitches that much more dangerous. Despite being a power pitcher, he was not so in love with the fastball, which ranged from 94-96 mph, that he ignored the other pitches.

Of Lester’s 106 pitches, 63 were fastballs; the others were cutters, curves, sliders and changes. If there is an optimum recipe for mixing pitches, it would be about 60 percent fastballs, 40 percent secondary stuff. Lester threw fastballs 59.4 percent of the time.

Holland has been nowhere near that split. In his first start at Houston, 80 percent of his pitches were fastballs and that worked out pretty well against the Astros offensively-challenged lineup. Against New York, a more patient and more dangerous team than Houston, he was 70 percent fastballs.

The idea on Saturday was to mix his pitches more. There is still work to be done there. His first 10 pitches were fastballs, which is fine early in the game. But his third offspeed pitch – a second-inning slider to Mike Lowell on an 0-and-2 count – was clanged off the top of the Green Monster for a homer. That can leave a mark on a pitcher’s psyche.

For the night, 61 of Holland’s 93 pitches were fastballs. Or, in other words, 69.2 percent of his pitches. If there was more mixing of pitches, it was subtle. But, at least to manager Ron Washington, it was noticeable.

Of Holland’s secondary stuff, which were split equally between changes and sliders, manager Ron Washington said: “It’s not where he wants it to be and it’s not where we want it to be, but he pitched more tonight. He used his breaking ball and changeup. He’s developing. He’s doing everything he’s capable of. He stood out there and battled tonight.”

The next issue is how soon Holland will get a chance to apply the lessons he may have learned Saturday. His next scheduled start is Thursday against Toronto, but LHP Matt Harrison could also come off the disabled list that day and potentially move Holland back to the bullpen for the time being. If there is one disadvantage to Holland’s development that goes along with pitching from the bullpen, it’s that there is a dire need to throw immediate strikes in that role and that forces him to rely mostly on his most commandable pitch: the fastball.

Perhaps that’s why Young, who rarely tries to make policy for the club, stepped out and offered a strong endorsement for the Rangers to find a way for Holland to remain in the rotation.

“It was a lot of fun to see him to watch Lester pitch and react to it,” Young said. “He’s got a great future. He’s got a chance to be a dominant-stuff type lefty and Lester is already there. I’d like to see us keep running him out there. I’m not big on pumping up rookies, but he competes hard and he really wants to be good.”

Besides, how is a kid supposed to show he’s learned lessons if not by applying what he’s learned as quickly as possible?