CHICAGO -- After the Cubs' 10-0 win over the Pirates in their 2019 home opener, Chicago starter Jon Lester was asked about Clint Hurdle's second-inning decision to walk Jason Heyward with first base open in order to face him. "Wouldn't you?" Lester quipped.

Lester, famously punchless with the bat after jumping from the DH league to the Cubs prior to the 2015 season, wound up doubling on a 0-2 slider from Jameson Taillon that hovered too long in the zone:

One batter later Lester -- now batting .667 on the season -- slid home on a Ben Zobrist knock, but not before injuring his hamstring. Such is the occasional punishment for a pitcher who deigns to venture onto the bases. 

Lester took the mound to start the third inning but after his first two pitches was visited on the mound by manager Joe Maddon. Maddon said after the game that Lester talked him into staying in. "He was trying to protect the bullpen," Maddon said. After Lester's next three pitches, though, Maddon has seen enough and lifted him for reliever Brad Brach. 

Although the Cubs entered this game with a grisly staff ERA of 7.51 for the season, Lester boasts a mark of 2.57 after three starts. Needless to say, his loss for any length of time would be a blow to the Cubs. The good news is that it's not an arm injury, but hamstring injuries can be slow to heal. The Cubs and Lester are of course hoping it's a minor malady. 

The team and pitcher will know more on Tuesday, when the veteran lefty undergoes an MRI. One positive sign is that Lester after the game said at no point was he in notable pain. He likened the injury to a cramp and stressed he didn't feel anything like a "pop" deep within his hamstring. Lester clarified that he tweaked his hamstring while running -- around the time he reached third base -- and not on the somewhat awkward-looking slide into the plate. Lester also said he didn't feel any discomfort while pitching in the third -- "more of a mental thing," he called it, "just not getting my back side through." 

He's planning on making his next scheduled start, at least until he hears otherwise. "Everybody on the training side always kind of thinks of the worst-case scenario, but I don't feel that way." 

As for Maddon, the disappointment beyond seeing his ace leave early with injury was that Lester looked so good on Monday. "That was the best he's thrown all year," Maddon said of Lester's first two innings. "He was up 92, 93; great carry on the fastball; the cutter was good; you could see from just watching him that he had great confidence out there. He was on the verge of really getting hot."

If there's an upside to this, it's that the Cubs' bullpen stepped into the breach with a level of effectiveness that's eluded them heretofore. "The good side of it is the bullpen comes in and picks me up," Lester said. "That's huge. It's an unfortunate spot that I put them in, but they picked our guys up today."

The Chicago relief corps came into Monday with an ERA of 8.37 and 26 unintentional walks and eight home runs allowed in 33 1/3 innings. All of that yielded an opponents' batting line of .296/.409/.563, which is nothing short of disastrous. On Monday, though, Brach escaped a two-on, no-out jam in the third, and then he, Brandon Kintzler, Randy Rosario and Pedro Strop combined for seven shutout innings with eight strikeouts against two walks. Sure, they were generally low-leverage outs against a lineup that's struggled in 2019, but the Cubs will take any kind of grounds for optimism when it comes to run prevention this season. "I want to believe that an afternoon like today is going to help build that confidence out there that they sorely need," Maddon said. 

Now the Cubs, 1-0 at home and 2-7 everywhere else, move forward with the lift of some sorely needed clean innings but uncertainty surrounding their rotation stabilizer. For the 2019 Cubs "hey, it's not all bad" qualifies as good news. Now the challenge is to build on it and get Lester back out there, getting outs and inspiring hosannas from his manager.