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After the Cubs opened up the 2018 season with an Opening Day win despite Jon Lester pitching terribly, I tweeted something to the effect of, “The Cubs ace didn’t even have his best stuff and the team still got the W.” A fan replied to my tweet with the laughing face emoji and stated that “Jon Lester is not the Cubs ace…got the Opening Day nod out of respect.”
I won’t even acknowledge the fact that a big league team would give someone an Opening Day start out of “respect” because this isn’t Little League but I will give the fan credit for making me doubt myself as to whether or not Lester was the team’s ace.
Then I realized I was still right.
The Cubs signed Lester to a 6-year, $155 million dollar deal in December of 2014 and now that he’s officially half-way through that monster deal, he’s been worth every damn penny the Cubs invested in him. So when this fan claimed that Lester was no longer the ace, I started to think as to who he thought was the leader of the Cubs staff.
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The only other pitcher the fan could have been referring to would be Kyle Hendricks. Since 2016, Hendricks has thrown 290 innings, recorded 293 strike outs, has a 1.08 WHIP, and posted a 2.58 ERA. You can argue all you want that it’s Hendricks who seemingly gets the ball in every big game but I don’t know if that warrants being deemed an ‘ace.’ I love Hendricks’ pitching style and love what he brings to the table but looking at what Lester has done since 2016 should be an eye-opener for Cubs fans.
As much as I think Hendricks is a great pitcher, Lester is still the ace of the Cubs pitching staff. Comparable to Hendricks’ stats from above, Lester has thrown 382 innings since 2016, recorded 377 strike outs, a 1.16 WHIP, and posted a 3.38 ERA.
We can sit and crunch numbers all we want but it always seems to be the bad starts that Lester has that people want to remember. When you look at Lester’s full body of work since 2016, he’s not only the at the top of the Cubs staff — he’s at the top of Major League Baseball.
Most starts with 5+ IP & 1 or fewer runs allowed (2016-present)
31 Jon Lester
26 Max Scherzer
25 Chris Sale
25 Clayton Kershaw— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) April 6, 2018
Lester showed his dominance once again last night as he threw six scoreless innings and only allowed three hits against the big, bad Milwaukee Brewers lineup. He was painting corners all night and pissed off the Brewers hitters enough that one of them (Travis Shaw) got ejected because Lester’s stuff was that damn electric.
Travis Shaw ejected #Cubs #Brewers pic.twitter.com/TsvcoczbQU
— Aldo Soto (@AldoSoto21) April 6, 2018
Let’s hope Lester can ride the momentum from last night’s start through the rest of the month of April and into the heart of 2018.
