Back in more innocent times, when Seth Levinson was just beginning negotiations in the spring with the Red Sox on a contract extension for pitcher Jon Lester that most everyone assumed would arrive at a happy outcome, he gave his client a book he’d assembled for Lester’s personal enjoyment.
The book not only contained a recitation of Lester’s career accomplishments, but gave his performance some historical context, how the Sox left-handed matched up against some of the best pitchers in the game.
Levinson had an ulterior motive in creating this book: He planned to make sure it wound up on the nightstands of CEO Larry Lucchino and GM Ben Cherington, too, to remind them of what they truly had in Lester, who had just turned 30.
The book was an eye-opener for Lester.
“It went back from Day one of baseball statistics to now,’’ Lester said the other day in Tropicana Field. “It goes back to Cy Young, back to Steve Carlton. It compared you to a lot of these guys in the Hall of Fame when they were the same age as you.
“I said, Shoot, I’ve got some better numbers than some of these Hall of Famers. Maybe I am pretty good. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve done it a time or two. I’ve been pretty consistent. And that’s when you realize, Hey, I am pretty good.’’
And when you start thinking in those terms, and contemplate how important starting pitching is to a team’s success, you look at the market for pitchers at your level and resolve not to sell yourself short. That didn’t mean Lester tore up the hometown discount he had said he was willing to take at the outset of talks; it just meant there might have been a perception issue between his side and the Red Sox on what constituted a hometown discount.