Lester is rising to the challenge

For the second time in a week, the Red Sox placed the hopes of their season on the broad, 24-year-old shoulders of Jon Lester. He had already replaced Josh Beckett, spitting at the pressure of the Game 1 assignment as easily as he dispatched the Los Angeles Angels. Lester did even more last night, taking a leap toward becoming every bit the October legend Beckett is.

Lester's feats so far this postseason challenge belief, defy expectation. He has twice faced the lineup that won more games than any other major league team and for 14 innings has not allowed an earned run.

Lester hurled blinding fastballs and devastating curveballs for seven innings last night, giving up four hits and zero runs in the Red Sox' 3-2, ALDS-clinching victory.

Lester has grabbed these playoffs by the throat and made them his personal showcase. He has now thrown 22 2/3 consecutive innings in the postseason without allowing an earned run.

"I don't think you could ever expect a guy to go out and do what he's done in this postseason," said Sox general manager Theo Epstein. "He was phenomenal.

"Last year, even though he won Game 4 of the World Series, he was still kind of a young man out there finding himself. Now, he is who he is. A dominating pitcher.

"He's learned to handle himself. He used to get flustered on the mound, allowed things he couldn't control to bother him. But now, he's just got tremendous focus. He thrives on that."

After he cruised through the first inning, Lester dodged trouble in the middle innings. Three out of four innings, he put two men on base and then left them there, calling on his best pitches when he needed them most.

With Angels starter John Lackey firing lightning bolts and slapping zeros on the scoreboard, Lester needed to match him. And he did.

"I feel good," Lester said. "My mind-set is good. My focus is good. I don't know. It's just a natural ability to try to focus on this start, and not worry about your last start."

His biggest out, perhaps, came in the fifth inning, with men on first and third, two outs, and Mark Teixeira - perhaps the AL's best player over the final two months - standing at the plate. Lester fired a 96-mile-per-hour fastball over the outside corner. Teixeira, somehow, watched it fly by for ball two.

Lester countered with a cutter at nearly the same location, a hair farther inside. Teixeira watched again. Then he walked to the dugout.

"He was outstanding," said Sox pitching coach John Farrell. "The full assortment of pitches. The composure he had. He was very powerful.

"You look at the top pitchers in baseball, and it's not atypical. Once he settled into his rhythm, he was using two or three pitches on both sides of the plate."

That challenge met, Lester dominated. He retired the final eight batters he faced, only two of them able to hit the ball out of the infield, none of them even sniffing a hit. When he came out after the seventh, "I thought I was done," he said. "I figured I was done."

Farrell asked him if he was done. Without thinking, Lester said yes.

"This kid is one of the best pitchers in the league right now," said manager Terry Francona.

But Francona didn't want to test him too much, to send him back with 109 pitches under his belt.

"He was very willing to go back out," Francona said. "But I think you can make a mistake on a pitcher, kind of emotionally shut it down or turns a switch off to try to rev it back up. Didn't seem like it made sense to me."

Francona inserted Hideki Okajima and then Justin Masterson, who squandered the 2-0 lead. The decision to take Lester out does not portend that he will be protected as the Red Sox move forward.

Francona, like everyone else watching, wants to see what his best pitcher can do next, ready to find out what else he is capable of.

"We're not going to hold him back," Francona said.

Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe.com