Hi. I'm a little, shall we say, concerned about Cubs fans. See, after Jon Lester, aka BDJ, AKA Jown Lesta, had his first spring training start on the 25th, #AtCubs' mentions were full of meatballs tweeting replies like this:
Mind you, Lester did get lit up (with an assist from Robel Garcia and Daniel Descalso on a very wonky play), but:
1. It's spring training. SPRING TRAINING. And his first outing. These things happen early on when a pitcher like Lester is still ramping up his velocity and getting a handle on his command, both of which are extremely important to our BDJ once the real big boy games start.
2. Jon Lester is a freaking WORLD SERIES HERO, and needs to be treated with some respect. YOU HEAR ME?!?
OK, now that I'm done being capsy, let's also get to the matter of Jon's contract. FanGraphs values players at $8 million per win. Lester's deal with the Cubs is for $155 million total, and oh hey... would you look at that? Jon Lester has already accumulated 16.8 fWAR as a Cub. That translates into $134.4 million worth of value the team has already gotten out of the big left hander. Essentially, Lester only needs about 2.5 fWAR this season to totally live up to the value of his deal, and he's only come under that total once as a Cub in 2018. (That's right--he was worth 2.8 fWAR last year. Better than you thought, right?)
Factor in his postseason performance, which isn't included in fWAR, and in my humble opinion his contract has already well paid for itself in that shiny piece of metal the Cubs won in 2016, as well as his playoff performance in 2017 and his Wild Card outing in 2018. So before you go trolling around in #AtCubs' comments to slander BDJ, I present this helpful flow chart to aid you in getting your thoughts together. Please use liberally.
