Lester says he only wants one pitch back

Jon Lester (three runs on six hits) turns his back on the solo homer by Willy Aybar in the seventh before dejectedly taking a seat (right) after the inning. (Barry Chin (left), Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Jon Lester walked onto the mound last night charged with ensuring he would make that walk again this year. The Rays had thumped him in his last outing, and he had never lost consecutive starts in his career. He expected he would transform back to the same scowling, measured Texan who blew through the Los Angeles Angels.

But Lester again ran into another flamethrowing 24-year-old in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Matt Garza and the Tampa Bay Rays beat Lester for the second time in six days, depriving him for now of his status as a burgeoning postseason legend and the new, untouchable ace of the Boston Red Sox. Lester felt no shame in his performance, seven innings during which he allowed three runs on six hits while striking out eight and walking none.

Only one of the 107 pitches Lester threw last night will trouble him from now until next season, the 3-and-2 pitch Willy Aybar smashed into the left-field seats in the seventh. The runs he surrendered in the fourth and fifth innings he chalked up to good pitches undone by bad luck.

"I only want one back," Lester said. "I was happy with the way I threw the ball. They just beat me tonight."

Lester's performance in his previous start, in Game 3, unraveled the nearly mythical status starting to envelop the lefthander. He had not allowed an earned run in 24 innings before the Rays tagged him for five runs in 5 2/3 innings.

The sudden struggles, combined with the 230 innings he had thrown in the regular season and playoffs, led to speculation that Lester was fading. While acknowledging the wear a 173-game season will bring, Lester said fatigue was not an issue in this start or his previous one.

"I feel like it's October," Lester said. "I feel I made 37 starts or whatever it is. In the postseason, you've got to suck it up. You've got to keep pounding. I don't think fatigue is an issue for any of us in this clubhouse. If it is, we're not going to use it as an excuse."

If Lester is tired, it didn't show in the first three innings. Lester retired the first nine hitters, striking out four. He mixed his pitches to confuse the Rays, and he overpowered them.

"Jon was tremendous out of the chute," manager Terry Francona said. "He had power with all of his pitches. He threw enough really good breaking balls to kind of slow them down a little bit."

Lester was rolling, just like his first two playoff starts this year. He felt good even after Akinori Iwamura led off the fourth with a single, the Rays' first hit.

He struck out B.J. Upton, perhaps the hottest hitter in baseball. He induced a ground ball from Carlos Peña, a pitch he thought had turned into a double play. But it wasn't struck sharply enough, and the inning lived.

"That happens sometimes," Lester said, and it kept happening. On a 2-and-2 count, he threw Evan Longoria a breaking ball low and away. "A great pitch," Lester said. Longoria poked it into the right-field corner, a desperate swing. But the ball rolled all the way to the corner, enough to push Peña around to score the game's first run.

The Rays took the lead for good on another sequence Lester chalked up to misfortune. He felt good about the pitch Aybar pulled to left for a leadoff double in the fifth. Dioner Navarro followed by hitting "a 17,000-hopper," Lester said, an infield single Alex Cora stopped but could not make a throw on.

Rocco Baldelli, whom Lester struck out in the third, followed.

"We had pounded him so much in with cutters and fastballs," Lester said. "I think he kind of got fed up and cheated."

Baldelli, looking for an inside pitch on an 0-and-2 count, pulled a fastball through the left side, "a ground ball," Lester said. When Aybar scored, Lester had lost the lead and begun pitching from an unfamiliar position, without the lead.

In the seventh, Aybar led off, and Lester worked a 2-and-2 count. He fired what he thought should have been called strike three. It was not. Lester, still thinking about the non-called strike, fired a pitch that Aybar clobbered for a home run, a pitch that disgusted him and left him with an uncomfortable thought for the winter.

"I still have to execute my pitch," Lester said. "That's really the only pitch all night I didn't execute and didn't have the finish on. The only pitch that will be replayed in my head is the 3-and-2 pitch to Aybar. I'm telling you the truth - it's the only pitch that I did not execute. That's the way it goes.

"That's probably the only pitch I'll be replaying this offseason."

Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe.com