Jon Lester Got Absolutely Shelled By The Pirates This Afternoon

It was a rough first inning for the Cubs’ Jon Lester today. He took the mound at 1:10 p.m. and promptly gave up a leadoff single to Pittsburgh’s Josh Harrison. A groundout and a walk put runners on first and second with one out and David Freese at the plate. This is precisely when it all went to shit.

A Kris Bryant error on Freese’s grounder to third loaded the bases. Then this happened:

And then this:

And then this:

To this point, Lester had given up five runs on four hits and a walk, and had thrown 30 pitches, and had recorded a single out. Things would somehow get worse. Lester sandwiched a sacrifice bunt between another pair of walks to load the bases again, this time for Francisco Cervelli.

Grand slam! And the horror was not over! Two pitches later:

It was only at this point, after Lester had surrendered 10 runs in two-thirds of an inning, on 53 pitches, that Cubs manager Joe Madden made the decision to yank the poor man.