Lester gone; Aardsma in

Jon Lester, after struggling early, had an excellent fourth inning, with two strikeouts (one swinging, one looking), but that was it for the lefty. Lester threw 83 pitches (47 strikes) in his four innings of work, and was just removed for David Aardsma at the start of the fifth inning.

Lester is unlikely to be happy with this outing this evening. He has worked on becoming more pitch efficient, mostly by improving the consistency of his command, which would enable him to pitch deeper into games. He didn't do that tonight, clearly.

He'll get another chance in Oakland, where he's scheduled to pitch in the second game of that series.