I've seen enough baseball to be very worried about Jon Lester in the wake of his no-hitter. I can hardly count the number of times I've seen a pitcher stay longer than he should in a game in order to achieve a milestone only to crack thereafter.
The poster child for that is Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout game in May of '98. Wood, a rookie, threw 122 pitches that game and 166 innings that year before his arm fell off, an injury from which he has really never fully recovered.
Lester, whose injury and illness history is inspiring and well-documented, threw 120 pitches in his no-hit start, a workload not usually allowed by the Red Sox brass. It's hard to imagine that he would have finished that game had he been pitching a three-hitter.
Owner John Henry, GM Theo Epstein and consultant Bill James have forgotten more baseball data than you and I and 27 of our friends have ever seen (and I've read James's books), so maybe they know something about Lester that we don't. I understand that they have arranged the rotation so that Lester gets an extra day's rest.
But history is littered with pitchers whose crowning achievement cost them a labrum, ulnar nerve or patellar tendon, and was the last good game they threw. I hope Jon Lester isn't on that list.
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