Jon Lester Hit Hard as Red Sox Drop Third Straight in Chicago

Postgame, White Sox, 8-2: Jon Lester was fantastic this year but his rough ending seems to exemplify the inconsistency of this rotation in 2010.

Every time there was a string of good starts it seemed as if someone would get knocked around, sometimes a few in a row.

Lester had been virtually unhittable in six straight starts. After he slammed into the wall Wednesday night the team’s ERA rose to 4.21, good for ninth in the A.L.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is one such inconsistent hurler. He will go in the opener of the Yankees series on Friday night. The game starts at 7:10 p.m. and we will be high above home plate to bring you all the action.

Final, White Sox 8-2: The Red Sox’ road finale is a disaster. Jon Lester does not get his 20th win and doesn’t even come close as his phenomenal year ends with a thud.

They will head home to take on the Yankees with no momentum and not much to play for other than pride and a chance to spoil the Yanks’ division title hopes.

Back soon to finish the last road game live blog of the year.

End 8th, White Sox 8-2: Michael Bowden gets in a quality inning of work and we head to the ninth. The Red Sox will finish with 43 road wins. They have had more than that just four times in the last 24 years.

Unfortunately, they only have 44 wins at home. They almost always finish with more than that, including six of the last seven seasons with 50-plus.

Mid 8th, White Sox 8-2: Mike Lowell’s career as a visiting player ends on a long double to center. He is replaced at second base by Daniel Nava and jogs off an opponents’ field for the last time.

Lowell is finishing with a little bit of a flourish. He is 5-for-13 with a home run, a double and four runs scored in his last five games.

Now it’s on to Fenway for “Thanks, Mike Night” on Saturday. Should be pretty special.

End 7th, White Sox 8-2: Juan Pierre, who was 3-for-3 with three steals and three runs scored, finally makes an out. So things are looking up.

Mid 7th, White Sox 8-2: When I was a kid we stopped playing when the lights went out. Just went home. They might as well in this one. The Red Sox have emptied the bench and are just counting the minutes until they can board that plane.

End 6th, White Sox 8-2: You can’t faze Robert Coello. You just can’t faze him. He sits through the power outage delay, strides atop the mound and retires two straight to finally end the sixth.

10:43 p.m.: It was a 21-minute delay in Chicago before the Sox and Sox resumed play. Unfortunately, it’s still 8-2 Chicago.

10:25 p.m.: The lights are out at U.S. Cellular Field and we are in a delay that may take as long as 20 minutes as the light banks overhead need to warm up. Unreal night for the Red Sox.

Robert Coello was pitching to Ramon Castro with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning when the full bank of lights went out, with the exception of the outfield bulbs. Is someone sending us a signal?

Can you imagine if Jon Lester was still in the game and going for his 20th and then this came along and threw him off track?

Mid 6th, White Sox 8-2: John Danks strikes out the side and you can almost see the Red Sox having thoughts of flying home. Expect some quick at-bats in the final three innings.

End 5th, White Sox 8-2: Robert Manuel comes in to clean up the mess, but Jon Lester must just be sick to his stomach right now.

The thing is, you know he’ll be knocking on the 20-win mark again some day. Lester is just entering his prime and is so solid, so sturdy, that you get the feeling he will be pitching at an elite level for many years to come.

Lester’s stuff is so dominant and his mound presence unparalleled. He just has to limit the walks a bit and he’ll be that much tougher to beat. There were five of those in this one, and several other three-ball counts.

9:52 p.m.: An extremely disappointing night for Jon Lester comes to an end three batters into the fifth. The first singled, the second homered and the third walked on four pitches. Lester never had it.

It’s a shame that his season has to end on such a note. He was an absolute horse for the Red Sox. Lester allows eight runs in four-plus innings, walking five in the process. He is still responsible for the runner at first.

Mid 5th, White Sox 6-2: John Danks is not giving Jon Lester much time to recover from these long innings. He works around a leadoff walk to Lars Anderson in the fifth.

End 4th, White Sox 6-2: Win No. 20 is probably not going to happen, folks. And you can kiss away any chance for Jon Lester to win the Cy Young Award. A Paul Konerko grand slam came amid a 38-pitch inning that featured two more walks, the third and fourth for Lester.

The lefty has thrown 91 pitches. They’ll try to get him through the fifth so that he is eligible for the win if the club can rally to take the lead in the next two innings. Not likely.

Mid 4th, 2-2: John Danks forces Jon Lester to get right back out there with an eight-pitch top of the fourth.

End 3rd, 2-2: Jon Lester is going to have to grind this one out it seems. Another hit (and another steal) by Juan Pierre precedes two weak bloop hits that bring in the tying run.

Lester has had to throw 53 pitches so far. We might be looking at a six-inning effort at this pace.

Pierre is 2-for-2 with three steals. Andruw Jones is 2-for-2 with both RBIs. Jerks.

Mid 3rd, Red Sox 2-1: Perhaps it is fitting that on a night that Jon Lester pursues 20 wins he gets his first lead when Victor Martinez slugs his 20th homer.

Martinez becomes the fourth player on the club with 20 dingahs. Ten of those have come in a torrid 31-game stretch for the star catcher, who is now hitting .404 (61-for-151) against lefties.

End 2nd, White Sox 1-0: We noted in our pregame post on Jon Lester’s Cy Young chances that one of the factors in a voter going against him might be the high walk totals.

He walked two of the first eight batters in this one, including lefty Alejandro De Aza on just four pitches. It’s been the one bugaboo for Lester all year. The De Aza walk (a good name for a band) is his 80th of the year, making him the fourth A.L. pitcher to reach that mark.

Lester’s walk rate entering this one was 3.4 per nine innings. It was 2.8 each of the last two years.

He did strike out the side, however, and now has 222 of those, good for third in the league.

Mid 2nd, White Sox 1-0: The Red Sox looked to have the tying run when Lars Anderson poked one down the line with a runner on third but third baseman Brent Morel made a spectacular diving stop and threw across for the third out.

Morel is a rookie who has had a nice series. He has three hits, a walk, two RBIs and a handful of pretty defensive plays.

End 1st, White Sox 1-0: It does not begin well for Jon Lester. He gives up a single to speedster Juan Pierre, who steals second and third and then scores on a single by Andruw Jones.

One of the outs came on a drive to the track in left center and two more came on a pretty double play that Jed Lowrie began.

Hopefully Lester just needed to work out the kinks. His first inning ERA this year is higher than all others 1-5 so there is precedent for that.

Mid 1st, 0-0: Jon Lester heads to the mound with a scoreless streak of 15 innings overall and a seven-inning run vs. Chicago.

Just so you all know, one of the six lefties who has reached 20 wins for the Sox is Ray Collins, who did it in 1914. Collins also happened to attend the same high school and college I did in Vermont and my father worked with his son for many years up there.

So this means something to my family, too.

7:51 p.m.: There is word from Chicago that both Adrian Beltre and Marco Scutaro were originally going to get the night off but lobbied to get back in there to help Jon Lester in his bid for 20 wins.

You have to admire those two and the way they have battled through bumps and bruises and now want to help out their star lefty. Could be a special night for the team, despite its disappointing fate.

6:10 p.m.: The Cy Young debate has centered around victories, with Felix Hernandez mired at “just” 13 due to his team’s horrendous offense.

Whether that is a reasonable cause to not vote for Hernandez is an intriguing argument. But even if you don’t hold wins in high regard you would have to think that Jon Lester’s chances do improve if he were to reach 20.

Lester may be fourth on the list behind Hernandez, CC Sabathia and David Price, simply because of how dominant Hernandez has been and how much the other two have led the two best teams in the league. But depending on what stat you look at, Lester may have an edge on his colleagues.

With 20 wins he would trail only Sabathia, whose ERA is 0.22 higher than Lester’s and who trails Lester in strikeouts, fewest hits per nine innings (a category in which Lester leads the A.L.), strikeouts per nine (Lester also leads the league in this category) and the all-important WHIP.

Lester is ahead of Price in each of those categories and would surpass him in wins if he is victorious Thursday. He should also pass Price in innings pitched, which would put him third among the quartet. In addition, Lester leads all A.L. hurlers in lowest opponents’ average (.215) and has the fewest home runs per nine innings (0.53) among the four favorites.

If any of these stats mean anything he should be considered a more worthy candidate than Sabathia and Price, and he has certainly been better down the stretch than both. (Price may have a say in that but what we’ve seen from Lester in the last month has been pretty impressive).

That leaves Hernandez. What may leave Lester short when compared to the Mariners’ ace (aside from Hernandez leading the league in ERA and strikeouts) is the fact that Lester has walked more men than any of the candidates, despite throwing 45 2/3 innings fewer than Hernandez, the league leader by a comfortable margin, 33 2/3 fewer than Sabathia and 3 2/3 fewer than Price.

The 26-year-old Lester had a few too many starts where his pitch count sailed due to high walk totals and three-ball counts and he was limited to six innings or so, sometimes less. And he also had the single worst start out of any of these names when he gave up nine runs in two innings last month against Toronto.

Whether the latter set of circumstances cancels out the former is up to the voters to decide. But entering Thursday it is not crazy to put Lester second on this list. With one more great start, and perhaps one rough one by Hernandez, who knows what it might look like.

4:17 p.m.: The lineups are in at U.S. Cellular Field. The Red Sox will go with a heavy right-handed crew against John Danks, while the White Sox have two guys named Brent in the bottom third of their order.

Red Sox

Marco Scutaro, 2B
Darnell McDonald, RF
Victor Martinez, C
Adrian Beltre, 3B
Mike Lowell, DH
Jed Lowrie, SS
Ryan Kalish, CF
Bill Hall, LF
Lars Anderson, 1B
 
White Sox

Juan Pierre, LF
Alexei Ramirez, SS
Paul Konerko, DH
Andruw Jones, CF
Ramon Castro, C
Dayan Viciedo, 1B
Brent Morel, 3B
Alejandro De Aza, RF
Brent Lillibridge, 2B

Back with more a little later on.

8 a.m.: Although his team is out of it Jon Lester will make a very big personal start Thursday when the Red Sox and White Sox finish a four-game series in Chicago.

Lester enters with a chance to become the American League’s second 20-game winner and can bolster his Cy Young Award candidacy with a quality outing. He has shown no signs that he will not deliver, going 6-0 with a 1.76 ERA over his last six starts.

The lefty dropped his ERA below 3.00 with a win in New York on Saturday.

Boston needs to win three of its last four games to reach the 90-win plateau.

John Danks is on the mound for Chicago. First pitch is 8:10 p.m.