ARLINGTON, Texas – It wasn’t so much a warning as it was a reminder.

Yes, the Red Sox are a team loaded with talent in every facet of the game. And yes, the unveiling of the lineup was most impressive, especially given that David Ortiz sidestepped his season-opening blahs with a homer (off lefty Darren Oliver, no less), Adrian Gonzalez laced a couple of run-scoring singles and Jacoby Ellsbury looked like a lineup dynamo.

Yet while it is clear that the Sox will score their runs, they also received a reminder that their pitching needs to be in lockstep with their offense in an Opening Day 9-5 loss to the defending American League champion Texas Rangers. (Recap.)

It is well and good to have a juggernaut offense, but doing so may end up being an exercise in clapping with one hand if the pitching is not similarly outstanding. Certainly, the Sox are capable of having both facets of their club excel. The potential of the pitching staff is tremendous.

At the same time, the questions about the club – whether Josh Beckett and Jonathan Papelbon will bounce back, whether Daisuke Matsuzaka will exhibit consistency, whether Clay Buchholz will remain dominant, whether the team has adequate starting pitching depth – revolve around the team’s arms.

That the Sox gave up nine runs with their two most dominant pitchers (Jon Lester and Daniel Bard) on the mound merely reinforced the notion that pitching can be wildly unpredictable, and that nothing should be taken for granted regarding any team, even one that is universally picked to be in the World Series.

Lester is now the unquestioned ace of the staff, three years deep into a run as one of the most consistently dominant pitchers in the game. As GM Theo Epstein said during spring training, the left-hander’s stuff is so good that he is “surprised every time he gives up runs.”

That being the case, there was plenty of surprise to endure on Friday, when Lester gave up five runs in just 5 1/3 innings. That, however, was far from the most surprising stat from the pitcher’s outing.

Lester allowed a career-high three homers, one when Rangers leadoff hitter Ian Kinsler ambushed him in the bottom of the first, jumping on a 1-0 fastball over the middle and ripping it into the seats in left field. (The other two homers, a solo shot by Nelson Cruz and a three-run shot by Mike Napoli, snuck just barely over the fence in left at the Ballpark in Arlington.) He also failed to strike out a single batter for just the second time in his career, a startling occurrence for a pitcher who led the American League with 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings in 2010.

His fastball, which can run from 95-97 mph on his best days, typically sat at around 90-92 mph on the stadium scoreboard on Friday. Yet Lester suggested that the pitch was fine, and that he wasn’t worried about the shortage of strikeouts.

“I thought [the fastball] was alright,” shrugged Lester. “Had a pretty good two seamer today. for whatever reason, we couldn’t get many swings and misses. That’s really the whole pitching staff. I don’t know what their approach was today but we didn’t get a whole lot of swings and misses and for the most part, got a lot of weak hit groundballs, some weak flyballs, other than the home runs.

“I don’t care about strikeouts,” added Lester. “I care about winning the game. I don’t care if I strike out another batter as long as we win.”

Bard, meanwhile, suffered through his worst line in the majors. The Sox rallied to tie the game on Ortiz’ homer in the top of the eighth. It was just the fourth time since 2007 that the slugger had hit a game-tying or go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later, and with the blast coming against left-hander Darren Oliver, it sent a charge through the Sox clubhouse.

“David hits a home run and it kind of changes the whole feeling in the dugout,” noted manager Terry Francona.

Any positive vibes soon vanished, however, when Bard took his lumps. He gave up a one-out walk to Mike Napoli (who had earlier hit a three-run homer against Lester), a single to Yorvit Torrealba and then fired a 96 mph two-seamer to ex-Sox prospect David Murphy.

"It was a perfect sinker down and away to a lefty," Bard sighed.

But Murphy flicked the bat head at the pitch and managed to flip the ball down the left-field line, where it kissed the chalk for a two-run double that gave the Rangers a 7-5 lead. They would add on, with Elvis Andrus lofting a fly ball over the head of a drawn-in outfield (the positioning reflecting Andrus’ notorious absence of pop) and Josh Hamilton lacing a third run-scoring double into the right field corner.

That was it for Bard, who matched a career-high by permitting four runs, and for the first time in the majors, allowed as many as three extra-base hits in a game. Yet the young right-hander suggested that it was the Rangers who deserved the credit for making him labor through 32 pitches (a total that will likely leave him unavailable on Saturday).

"We battled all day to stay in that game. It sucks to be the one who gives it away," said Bard. "I felt great. Felt really good, all the way through the end. I thought I made a lot of quality pitches. ... They put together some really good at-bats. I’m not upset with how I threw the ball, just upset with the results."

In the Sox clubhouse, there was no sense of alarm, and rightly so. The track records of Lester and Bard are such that the team can exude confidence that both pitchers have better days ahead. And while an Opening Day loss is hardly greeted with enthusiasm, the vast expanse of 161 games on the horizon suggests that there is little cause for panic.

“Any loss is frustrating. [But] it’s the first game, and we’ve got 161 more to go,” said Kevin Youkilis. “Hopefully we can bounce back [Saturday] and put together some good at-bats, score some runs, play some defense and pitch well.”

That is the sort of multidimensional formula that has guided the construction of this Red Sox team, the same formula that will be needed for the team to achieve its far-reaching goals for the coming year. On Opening Day, it may not have been in effect, but the Sox remain confident that their true abilities will be apparent soon enough.

“There’s going to be a lot of games like that this year,” shrugged Youkilis. “We know we’re better than we played today. We didn’t play horrible, but we didn’t play up to our potential.”

But it is baseball, and plenty of time remains to find out how that potential will translate to performance.