Chicago Cubs: Jon Lester finds himself in a pickle

Several days since Chicago Cubs ace Jon Lester was tagged for nine earned runs against the Oakland Athletics, one of the team’s leaders had tried to be as level headed as possible. But perhaps he might be jumping to conclusions of his own.

After Tuesday night’s beating, Jon Lester confronted Chicago Cubs beat writers with some sobering comments:

The man who has been the Opening Day starter since the Cubs signed him in December 2014 felt it was appropriate to put himself on the hot seat, to self-scout himself. To be fair, he had a point: Lester has been shaky of late.

While he did do well a couple Saturdays ago in Milwaukee, he got beat up in St. Louis and then at home against Oakland. Meanwhile, his teammates had been pitching well while he has been susceptible to consistent contact this year (per FanGraphs, his BABIP leads the MLB at .340). Not good.

Since he called himself out, quite a bit has changed. Jose Quintana had since spun a gem against the same Athletics team that did Lester a number the night before. But since the team made their way over to play the Cincinnati Reds in a critical four-game road tilt, the starting pitching has been less than ideal:

• Thursday, Cole Hamels: 3.0 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 1 HR, 2 BB, 2 SO, ND.
• Friday, Yu Darvish: 6.0 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 HR, 0 BB, 9 SO, L.
• Saturday, Kyle Hendricks: 2.2 IP, 12 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 HR, 0 BB, 3 SO, L.
• Sunday, Jon Lester: ??????????

While the numbers for the two, three, and fourth starters are all over the place, it might appear as if Lester spoke too soon; he is far from the weakest link. While he has had his fair share of bad days, now more than ever, he is so much more valuable to this team than he may ever realize.

That said, tomorrow, when he faces off against the Reds’ change-up master, Luis Castillo, he will need to bring his best work to the mound.

The team needs him to. They need him to get himself straight.

The Reds hold a 9-6 record over the Cubs this year, which might sound kind of crazy, but for a couple of years, the only thing holding this team back from causing NL Central chaos was their starting pitching rotation.

Guess what? Those days have soundly come to an end.

Chicago needs their man who’s one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time. They need the man who was a 2016 Co-NLCS MVP to get right on the double. The team has only just begun a 10-game road stint and they need him to be at his absolute best if they want to try and shake the road game woes.