He’s won three championships for two iconic franchises, started Game 1 of the World Series, appeared in Game 7 of the Fall Classic and pitched in a bunch of postseason clinchers. He beat cancer. He’s made nearly $200 million in career earnings. He’ll never have to buy anyone another drink in Boston or Chicago (though he actually did buy a whole lot of people drinks in Chicago after the 2020 season).
Jon Lester, suffice it to say, doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody at this point in his life.
Yet when asked today during his introductory Zoom session as a member of the Nationals what he still wants to accomplish, the 37-year-old left-hander didn’t have to pause to consider his answer.
“Win,” he said. “That’s never wavered for me. From day one in the minor leagues, ‘til I signed with the Cubs to now being here with the Nationals, I want to win. I still have the drive to win. I want to bring another ring to D.C., and hopefully we can do that.”
The Nationals had exactly those visions when they made the decision to target Lester for the vacancy in their rotation. His one-year deal only guarantees $5 million, peanuts in comparison to the nine-figure contracts the organization gave to fellow starters Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, but he and the club know he doesn’t need to duplicate those three pitchers’ performances in 2021.
The Nats just need Lester to be a solid No. 4 starter. They need him to stay healthy - he made 31 or more starts each season from 2008-19 and didn’t miss a start during the abbreviated 2020 campaign - and give them a chance and hopefully come up big in some big games down the stretch and beyond.
It’s a bit of a new role for Lester, or certainly one he hasn’t held in a long time. Way back in the early stages of his career, he was the young fourth starter in a star-studded Red Sox rotation that included Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett and Tim Wakefield. But over the years, he ascended into the No. 1 or No. 2 role and anchored Boston’s 2013 and Chicago’s 2016 World Series rotations.
Now he’ll take a back seat to Scherzer, Strasburg and Corbin. And he’s more than willing to do so.
“I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be nice to just kind of sit back and watch these guys work,” Lester said. “Obviously, I’ve seen them from afar and got to compete against them for a long time. And I’m excited to work with them. ... I’m just excited to dig into their minds and see how they prepare and really just stay out of the way. I want to be kind of a fly in the wall with this rotation and just try to help out as best I can.”
None of this is to suggest the Lester signing is guaranteed to be a success. The Nationals are taking a chance on an aging left-hander who over the last four seasons owns a pedestrian 4.14 ERA and 1.370 WHIP while seeing his strikeout rate go down and his home run rate go up. He also has a well-known issue with throwing over to first base, though he’s worked extensively to shorten his delivery to the plate and over the last several years has been able to control opponents’ running game.
Lester knows he’s not the same pitcher he was earlier in his career, but he believes he can still be effective as he continues to adapt year to year.
“You just have to learn to evolve,” he said. “You have to learn how to get outs. And I think as you get older - and as it gets harder as you get older - you try to make getting outs easier if you can, if that makes sense. It’s just an evolving thing, and something I’m learning every day.”
Lester will have plenty of familiar and trusted faces around him to help in that process. Nationals Park has unintentionally become something of an East Coast branch of Wrigley Field, with manager Davey Martinez, new pitching coach Jim Hickey, new left fielder Kyle Schwarber, returning second baseman Starlin Castro and others all having come from the Cubs.
“When you know people, it makes coming into a whole new environment easier,” said Lester, whose departure from Chicago has not been well-received by Cubs fans. “Not only players, but the management. I know these guys, and they know me, so they know what to expect of me and I know what to expect of them. That makes that whole kind of guessing thing early on easier. Yeah, that definitely helped the process. That communication was a huge part of it.”
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Lester comes to D.C. with one goal in mind: "I want to win" - MASNsports.com
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