Much like last season, Jon Lester had struggled with hard contact this season. In 2018, he allowed the second-highest hard contact of his career (31.9%), a more than 3% increase from a year prior. A year later, Lester is rewriting his career mark altogether, giving up 39.5% hard contact thus far. Opposing batters are squaring Lester up like never before, already accumulating the same number of barrels (28) he allowed in all of 2017 and generating an average exit velocity of 88.5 mph.
Fortunately for Lester, the season is far from over. As the calendar currently reads the middle of July, he has roughly 12-14 more starts to improve upon his 9.