There was pitch No. 119, a 93 mph fastball that was up, in and past the swinging bat of overmatched Mariners hitter Alex Liddi.

The final note of Jon Lester’s complete game on Monday offered a faint echo of one of the most memorable moments of the pitcher’s career. It was almost exactly four years ago, back on May 19, 2008, that Lester pumped a 96 mph fastball past Alberto Callaspo of the Royals on the final pitch of a no-hitter that announced to the baseball world that the young left-hander was coming.

On Monday, the message was slightly different, but no less significant. With his first nine-inning complete game victory since June 27, 2010, Lester offered a signal that he hasn’t gone away.

This season, there have been occasions on which it seemed fair to ask whether Lester was indeed showing the same kind of stuff that established him as one of the game’s most consistent and best starters while pitching in the American League East over the last four years. Through seven starts, his strikeouts were down (his 6.0 per nine innings representing a career low), while his walks were up (3.9 per nine, his most since 2007), and an awful outing (a two-inning, seven-run, hold-your-nose mauling by the Rangers in mid-April) colored what he had done this year.

Yet there was, and is, an overlooked component to Lester’s season, namely, that the notoriously slow-starting lefty actually has been better out of the gate than he has been in most seasons of his career.

In that vein, it is worth pointing out that after Monday’s outing, his ERA now stands at 3.71 for the season after eight starts. Here is how that performance stacks up against Lester’s first eight starts in the previous four years, starting with his breakthrough season of 2008:

2012: 51 innings, 2-3, 3.71 ERA, 6.0 strikeouts per nine, 3.2 walks per nine
2011: 51 2/3 innings, 4-1, 2.96 ERA, 8.9 K/9, 3.5 BB/9
2010: 50 2/3 innings, 3-2, 3.91 ERA, 9.6 K/9, 4.1 BB/9
2009: 47 innings, 2-4, 6.51 ERA, 10.3 K/9, 3.1 BB/9
2008: 45 2/3 innings, 2-2, 3.94 ERA, 5.3 K/9, 5.1 BB/9

In short, with roughly a quarter of his starts this year now concluded, Lester has delivered a season very much in line with his career norms. While the path to this point hasn’t been a straight line, his performance to date looks extremely similar to those that characterized his four-year run as the de facto ace of the Red Sox.

“Instead of 1-3, he could very easy be 4- or 5-2. That’s how the game is sometimes,” said pitching coach Bob McClure, who noted that Lester (2-3) received no run support in some of his early outings. “I think overall, he’s been consistent enough. If he was 4-1 right now, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. People who are asking, ‘Why isn’t Jon Lester pitching better’ and blah, blah, blah, I’m like, ‘You must not be watching all the games.’”

Against the Mariners, Lester featured a dominant 91-94 mph fastball throughout the night that resulted in both swings and misses as well as groundballs. He complemented that offering with a changeup and breaking ball that permitted him to have pitches that broke in both directions.

He located with all three offerings, thus permitting his surgical attack on a Mariners lineup against whom he allowed one runs on eight hits (seven singles and a double) and no walks (the first time this year he hasn’t walked a batter) with six strikeouts.

The three-pitch mix was too much for the Mariners. Lester required just the 119 pitches to navigate through all nine frames.

“Just for you younger reporters out there, that’s called a complete game -- when the starter starts it and then he finishes it,” manager Bobby Valentine joked after the game. “He went out, and it looked like he had a mission to accomplish and he accomplished it. He was throwing all of pitches early in the game, throwing them all for strikes. He had a very confident look about himself.”

Lester also seemed particularly determined on the mound on Monday night. He worked quickly, sensing that he had the Mariners back on their heels while pitching to both sides of the plate and changing speeds effectively. And as the game progressed, he sniffed the opportunity to go wire to wire.

And so, at a time when his stuff was beginning to fade (Lester allowed three singles in the seventh, and then a single and a double in the ninth en route to the only run he allowed of the night), he reached back. In the ninth, Valentine had both Franklin Morales and Alfredo Aceves warming, and Lester was down to his last batter of the night when Liddi stepped to the plate.

The left-hander was not about to stop short of the finish line.

“That, for me, was my game. Bobby was going to have to fight me for the ball if he came down the end of the dugout [before the ninth],” Lester said.

And that desire, coupled with an ability to perform at a level to ensure that it became a reality, explains why the Red Sox continue to view Lester as being the same pitcher that he has always been.

In eight starts, he has gone at least seven innings on five occasions. He leads the team with five quality starts, and Monday marked the third time this year that he has gone at least seven innings while allowing one or no runs.

The wins and losses do not reflect what the left-hander has been or what the Sox consider him to be. While there has been some inconsistency to his performance this year, the larger body of work suggests a pitcher intent on living up to his established reputation.  

“I think a No. 1 [starter], you can’t just look at stuff. It’s more than stuff. It’s a mentality along with pitchability,” said McClure. “Stuff’s in there, no question. But if you have great stuff but are pitching five innings or you are walking everyone, you can’t be a No. 1. With all the things combined [for Lester], no question. There are a lot of clubs that would consider him like that, including me.”