Lester and Gabbard: Wins on the Waiver Wire

Jon Lester, who last pitched in the bigs on August 23rd of last season, will make his triumphant return from cancer tomorrow night for the Red Sox. In fact, no sooner had I just said aloud to my girlfriend that we may never see Lester come up because Kason Gabbard has been so effective, Don & Jerry told me Lester was starting tomorrow!

I quickly got back into my ESPN league and made the appropriate add/drop -- for the 2nd time this season. I had previously picked Lester up on May 30th, thinking he was a lock to come up and replace Julian Tavarez as the Sox #5 starter. Besides the feel-good aspect of course, I truly believed he could pick up some much needed Ws for my Flyin' Squirrels. (Lester was 6-2 last season.)

But Tavarez got on a roll, and Lester struggled at Pawtucket -- most notably struggling after he was not called up when pretty much everyone expected him to replace the injured Curt Schilling. Interestingly, Sox manager Terry Francona as much as admitted that was a factor. "I think he had some frustrations while he was there,'' Francona said. "He had to fight through wanting to be here and pitching there."

Then Gabbard came up instead, and after stinking up Seattle June 26th, he's strung together 4 increasingly impressive starts and looks to be a decent pick-up in deep leagues himself.

Certainly any starting pitcher on Sox is a good bet for the elusive Ws so sought-after in roto leagues. But even when he was pitching well, Tavarez was never a good fantasy option because he didn't pitch deeply into games and garnered more ground-balls than strikeouts. Lately he's been garnering more hits and walks (51 in 23 1/3 IPs) than outs of any kind.

The call-ups of Gabbard and now Lester gives fantasy owners two opportunities to buy starting pitchers on the team with the best record in baseball. Lester's call up was a bit of a surprise announcement, but reports are that Schilling will spend a little more time rehabbing in Pawtucket, giving both young lefties a chance to shine in Fenway in the coming weeks.