Jon Lester was sent to the mound in the season opener surrounded by the promise of what figured to be a memorable season, both for him and his team. Six days later, with the Red Sox now through one full turn of the rotation without a quality start, without a win and with a poor start reaching historic proportions, he will be called upon once again.
Take two!
This time, Lester won't just be looking to get a highly anticipated season started, he will be looking to help Boston (the team and the city) erase the sting of the worst loss in what has become a horrific opening stretch.
"There's not a lot to be pleased about right now," said manager Terry Francona after an 8-4 loss to Cleveland on Wednesday night.
While the final score might not suggest an all-out horrendous effort, a closer inspection reveals a series of frustrating scenarios for Boston, one of three teams in baseball still searching for win No. 1.
There were loads of wasted opportunities. The Red Sox were 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and the one hit was a Marco Scutaro chopper behind the mound that resulted in an infield single. They had runners on second and third and no outs in the third and saw the trio of Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz and J.D. Drew go down in order, two of them on strikeouts. They had runners on the corners and one out in the fourth, but Youkilis struck out again and Ortiz grounded to first.
Then came a sixth inning that seemed to encapsulate the season into one dreadful effort to get three outs.
Dennys Reyes relieved Daisuke Matsuzaka to start the inning. Over the course of his 12 pitches, just one found the strike zone, two made contact with Cleveland hitters and the last four were delivered for balls, loading the bases in a heartbeat.
That was it for Reyes, whose appalling outing was merely the opening act for an inning that saw things go from bad to worse. It was still a 3-2 game, and when Dan Wheeler got Michael Brantley to loft a liner to Kevin Youkilis at third, there was a golden opportunity to get a double play.
Youkilis actually dropped the ball, but quickly stepped on third and then came home, where Jason Varitek caught the throw but neglected to realize that the force was off. He touched home, thinking he had the second out of the play, and allowed Travis Buck to just slip in behind him with the Indians' fourth run of the night.
By the time most of the meager crowd at Progressive Field had realized what had happened, Asdrubal Cabrera had deposited a Wheeler offering into the seats in right, a three-run blast that essentially put an end to Boston's hopes for its first victory of the year.
"We're just not getting it done," said Youkilis, who stressed that the team is itching to get that first win for the fans and for the new players who have yet to experience the feeling of victory in a Red Sox uniform.
The 0-5 start is the team's third since 1945. It also dropped its first five in 1966 and 1996, two seasons in which the only expectations were that the team would play 162 games. They will again this year, but reaching those lofty preseason predictions is getting a tad more difficult by the day, even though there are still 157 games to go.
"We haven't won a game yet. If they're having a party in the clubhouse something's going wrong," Francona added. "Again, we've got to show up in about 10 hours and Lester has to go out there and get rolling.
"Nobody's going to feel sorry for us. If we start feeling sorry for ourselves, then we're in trouble."
That hasn't happened yet. But the feeling the team, the fans and the city felt moments before Lester threw his first pitch of the season is long gone.
