Lester Hits Rock Bottom

Yesterday afternoon, with the Boston Red Sox desperately trying to stave off a sweep at the hands of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Bosox were counting on Jon Lester (winless in July) to pitch like the Lester of old.  You know, the Lester who always seems to be a preseason Cy Young candidate.  The dominant pitcher who hurled a no-hitter.  The workhorse that made two All-Star teams.  The crew-cut kid who beat cancer, and then the Rockies to secure Boston's World Series championship in 2007. 
The Red Sox needed their ace to ride to the rescue and salvage a win before hitting the road to do battle with the top two teams in baseball.

Instead, he suffered the worst outing of his major league career--according to the Bill James GameScore metric--with a stinker that produced a rating of negative 3.  It was sad.  Pathetic.  Pitiful.   The Blue Jays, sans Jose Bautista, bludgeoned the struggling southpaw for eleven runs (a career worst) in the first five innings of what became a 15-7 slugfest.  The beatdown capped off a demoralizing three game sweep that dropped the Sox to 48-48, back to the bottom of the AL East.    

Lester was in trouble from the get-go when Brett Lawrie slammed his first pitch of the day out of the park for a leadoff home run.  Things snowballed from there.  The Blue Jays went through the order  and piled on four more runs, making Lester burn through 29 pitches.  Red Sox fans have seen this horror movie too many times before, as the first inning has been a major problem for the staff all season long.  Almost every game now they find themselves in a hole right off the bat, perpetually playing catch-up. 

It didn't take long for the Sox to rally off Jays' starter Henderson Alvarez.  Adrian Gonzalez, who's been red hot over the past month, got three runs back with one swing of the bat when he launched his third home run of the week.  You got the feeling that if Lester could just settle down and perform some damage control, Boston would eventually scrape together some runs and climb its way back into the game. 

Unfortunately, his second inning was nearly as rough as the first.  After issuing a leadoff walk to Lawrie, Lester got two quick outs and needed just one more strike to put away Edwin Encarnacion and escape the inning unharmed, but walked him on a full count.  Power hitting backstop J.P. Arencibia made him pay with a backbreaking three-run bomb that sucked the life out of the crowd.  Then Rajai Davis (Rajai Davis, WHO HOMERS ONCE EVERY 100 AT-BATS) followed suit with a solo shot, just for good measure. 

Lester clearly had nothing, needing 55 pitches to get through those two messy innings, but Bobby Valentine kept the laboring lefty in the game. The skipper simply couldn't afford to dip into his bullpen so early, not with three games coming up against baseball's most potent offense. He had to preserve the bullpen, even if that meant hanging Lester out to dry. And who knows?  Maybe if he could bounce back and end the day with a few decent innings, he'd have something to feel good about and build on heading into his next start.

Sure enough, he seemed to recover a bit by keeping Toronto off the board in the third and fourth, ending each inning by inducing ground-ball double plays.  Boston loaded the bases with just one out in the bottom of the fourth, but only managed to push across one run on a Mike Aviles sac fly. Alvarez was on the verge of unraveling, but lucky for him Lester walked Davis to start the fifth. No surprise there, as he'd allowed the leadoff batter to reach base in all five of his innings (so he was basically pitching from the stretch the entire afternoon, which is never good).  Travis Snider tagged him for a two-run shot into the batter's eye, his first major league home run in over a year.  Jarrod Saltalamacchia jogged out to the mound to calm Lester down/give Junichi Tazawa more time to warm up.  I imagine their conversation went something like this:

Salty: "Jesus, Jon.  It looks like batting practice out here.  What's the matter with you today?"
Lester: "I dunno, man.  Just not my day, I guess.  I've had a rough couple of weeks here, to tell you the truth.  Could really use a drink right about now."
Salty: "Don't worry about it.  I saw meltdowns like that all the time when I was with the Rangers. (Velentine hops out of the dugout) At least it's over now."
Lester: "About time. I should have been out of this game an hour ago.  So relieved when I saw Hideki Okajima warming up out there."
Salty: "John that's not...never mind."
Lester: "Oh right.  Dice-K.  My bad."
Salty: (shaking his head)
Lester: "Well I was thinking of maybe ordering some KFC, cracking open a cold one and kicking back in the clubhouse.  See if Josh and John Lackey are around.  You in?"
Salty: "What? I got a game to catch."
Lester: "Ahhh that's right.  Maybe some other time?"
Salty: "I don't think so, Jon.  That suff is banned in the clubhouse now."
Lester: "Suit yourself.  Just keep it between us, alright?  Bobby doesn't need to know."
Salty: "Sure. Whatever"
Lester: "I mean it.  Snitches get stitches, bro.  Why do you think they traded Kevin Youkilis?  Fella couldn't keep his big mouth shut.  It would be a real shame..."
Salty: "I get it."
Lester: "Good.  (Valentine arrives) Alright man, I'm out of here.  Take it easy.  I'll save a drumstick for ya!"
Salty (sighs): "Good talking to you, too."
Valentine: "What the hell was that about?"

There's not really much to say, Salty

All kidding aside, Lester has to be frustrated with his recent slump.  Before trudging to the dugout while the disappointed Fenway Faithful showered him with boos, he walked a career-high five batters. He surrendered four home runs.  To put that in perspective, he had allowed five in his previous nine starts. What has already been a tough season for him has continued to get worse; his ERA swelled to an unsightly 5.46--two full runs higher than last year--and his bloated WHIP sits at 1.46.  His record fell to 5-8, and Boston has now lost six of his last eight turns. 

It would be one thing if this one disastrous start was an isolated incident, a bump in the road, but it's not. It's a troubling trend. That makes three starts in a row now that Lester has failed to complete the fifth inning.  And let me tell you, it's been a grisly couple of weeks.  Spanning just 12 and one-third innings, he's been pummeled for 25 hits and, get this, 21 earned runs, good for a 15.32 ERA.  Opposing hitters have destroyed him, batting .439/.522/680.  48.8 percent of balls put into play have turned into hits, and his average GameScore has been below 18.  To be fair, all three starts came against excellent offenses (Yankees, White Sox, and Blue Jays) at Fenway, which has never been a southpaw's best friend. 

These Tim Lincecum-esque struggles are puzzling, to say the least, and are even more confounding because he's been so steady over the past four seasons, winning between 15 and 19 games with an ERA between 3.21 and 3.47. He's 28 years old.  He's healthy. There hasn't been a drop off in velocity, an issue that's plagued rotation-mate Josh Beckett.  In my first half pitching review a week ago I predicted a nice turnaround in the second half, and I'm sticking to my guns.  Lester is better than this, so I'm not going to count him out just yet.  He's hit rock bottom, and there's nowhere to go but up.

Even if his next start is at Yankee Stadium this Saturday.