Cubs’ Jon Lester: Best in (free agent) class after just 2 years?

MESA, Ariz. — Two years into a six-year, nine-figure contract, the Cubs already have gotten their money’s worth out of Jon Lester.

All $155 million worth the last two years alone?

Believe it. If he took the next four years off, he still would be the most valuable from a free agent class two winters ago which included 2016 National League Cy Award winner Max Scherzer.

The Cubs, however, won’t go that far. And Lester certainly doesn’t believe it.

But the Cubs went from 73 wins before Lester’s signing to 200 wins the last two seasons including winning five of six postseason series, including the season fans have waited 108 years to see and that the business department might spend almost as much time cashing in on.

When the Cubs signed their first nine-figure player — Alfonso Soriano after a last-place finish in 2007 — nobody believed that eight-year, $136 million deal was going to pay off in player value. The theory was if it led to that elusive championship in the first two or three years, they would have their value — the last five or six years be damned.

Lester was one of many players who impacted on that organizational breakthrough the last two seasons.

But he set a tone and brought credibility to the vision when he turned down the three-time champion Giants, who offered a seven-year deal, and the Red Sox, who offered a substantial comfort zone, to sign with the last-place Cubs.

“It was like winning the lottery,” manager Joe Maddon said Wednesday, repeating the first words he uttered to the media the night Lester signed. “And it has been.”

Just imagine if he does anything close this year to what he did last season — 19-5, 2.44 ERA, runner-up to Scherzer in the Cy Young voting and a 3-1, 2.02-ERA surge through the postseason over five starts and a Game 7 World Series relief appearance.

Never mind anything he might contribute on the backside of the contract if he stays healthy.

“We accomplished what I came here to do,” Lester, 33, said after an 86-pitch effort in a six-inning start on the minor-league side of camp Wednesday (efficient enough that outs were added to some innings so he could get his prescribed work).

“That was the main reason why Theo [Epstein] wanted me to get here, and I wanted to come here,” added Lester, who has one more spring start before starting the season opener in St. Louis April 2. “Now the hard part is that you don’t get complacent. That’s where you still have to do your work and still put your time and all that other stuff to be ready to pitch.”

The work ethic and now-do-it-again attitude was part of what the Boston expatriates in the Cubs’ front office knew when they signed the player they drafted in 2002.

“When we signed Jon to a six-year deal, certainly we were excited about all six years on the deal,” general manager Jed Hoyer said. “But already sitting here after Year 2, he’s been exactly what we wanted. We wanted a guy that had the makeup to pitch in huge games and he did that.”

That included the National League Championship Series co-MVP, and the New York baseball writers’ award for overall postseason MVP. In two postseasons with the Cubs, Lester has pitched 49⅔ innings over nine starts and one relief appearance for a 2.17 ERA.

Scherzer? He made two first-round playoff starts last year without a win.

“There’s no way we’re world champions without Jon Lester,” Hoyer said. “That was the crux of the presentation that we gave him going back to [the free agency courtship]. The crux of it was, ‘You weren’t able to be a part of it in Boston. Come be a part of this in Chicago.’ And he was incredibly excited about that, and he delivered.”

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Email: gwittenmyer@suntimes.com