Sometimes the headline is all you need to tell the story. Jon Lester seems like he would be the type of pitcher that wouldn’t be affected either way by not having people in the stands. As he ramps back up, he was able to throw 76 pitches over five innings holding the Reds to just one walk and no hits. Lester only struck out one but was very effective in the Cincinnati bandbox.
What should have been an easy win turned out to be anything but due to a downright awful bullpen effort. It’s easy to single out Craig Kimbrel (and his four walks) as the scapegoat since he’s the high-ticket closer and was incredibly painful to watch, but there were no standouts in the group that walked eight batters over four innings.