Lester, 3-time World Series champ, retires with 200 wins
Jon Lester, a durable lefthander who won three World Series titles during 16 years in the majors and started for the A’s in the 2014 AL wild-card game, has announced his retirement.
Lester, who turned 38 on Friday, finishes with a 200-117 record and a 3.66 ERA in 452 career games, including 451 starts. He also has been a reliable postseason performer, compiling a 2.51 ERA in 26 appearances.
Listed at 6-foot-4, Lester helped Boston win the Series championship in 2007 and 2013, and led the Chicago Cubs to the title in 2016. The championship for the Cubs was the franchise’s first since 1908.
“It’s kind of run its course,” Lester told ESPN. “It’s getting harder for me physically. The little things that come up throughout the year turned into bigger things that hinder your performance.”
Lester was selected by Boston in the second round of the 2002 amateur draft and broke into the majors with the Red Sox in 2006. He was traded with Jonny Gomes to the A’s on July 31, 2014, for Yoenis Céspedes and went 6-4 down the stretch as Oakland made the playoffs.
In the wild-card game, he pitched 71⁄3 innings against the Kansas City Royals, leaving with a 7-4 lead, but Oakland lost 9-8 in 12 innings. Lester signed a $155 million, six-year contract in the offseason and shared NLCS MVP honors with Javier Baez on the way to the Cubs’ historic championship in 2016.
Lester got his 200th career win when he pitched six effective innings for St. Louis in a 5-2 victory at Milwaukee on Sept. 20.
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