CLEVELAND — By the first week December of 2014, Jon Lester had narrowed his decision down to three clubs. One was the Red Sox, where he’d spent most of the previous nine years, most of them happy. The second was the Giants, who were pursuing the free agent starter by unusually creative means. They had even enlisted Buster Posey, their MVP catcher, to show up at Lester’s door outside Atlanta to deliver a recruiting pitch.
Those two teams had won four of the previous five World Series. Lester’s third suitor, meanwhile, hadn’t had quite that track record of recent success.