MESA, Ariz. -- Jon Lester wants the baseball. He wants to make every start and keep throwing until Cubs manager Joe Maddon pries the ball from his fingers. Do not ask him about the opener. You'll get an annoyed laugh, a roll of the eyes and a scowl. And definitely do not assume Lester can't be better this year than last because of his age.

"I'm not dead," Lester said on Monday, when he worked two innings in a 6-4 Cactus League split-squad win over the Padres at Sloan Park.

Lester is as old school as they come. The left-hander is the veteran atop a Cubs rotation filled with them. He has been to baseball's mountaintop with power in his arm and hopes to be back there again this season, even as finesse becomes more critical to him than speed. Lester has been surviving by evolving, and that is what fuels his crusty veteran confidence.

What irks Lester -- more than talk of a universal designated hitter -- is the fact that he didn't log 200 innings last season. He made 32 starts, which marked the 11th straight year the lefty has logged at least 31, but he ended with 181 2/3 innings. Lester will take the 18 wins and the 3.32 ERA, but he felt there were a surplus of outs that were left to Chicago's bullpen.

Lester, who struck out three and walked one in Monday's hitless outing, wants to do something about that in 2019.

"I expect more out of myself than anybody in that front office or on the field or the fans," Lester said. "That 200 is still my number. There's a lot of games throughout last year where I couldn't put guys away, which gets me to that seventh inning. A lot of games with 90-something pitches into the sixth and your spot comes up and you have to kind of bow to the manager on that."

There are clues about how Lester will try to accomplish that goal found in last season's game logs.

The reality is that the 35-year-old Lester is not able to zip a fastball like he could in his Major League youth. Earlier this spring, he said it is important for every pitcher to "look yourself in the mirror" when that point in his career arrives and come to terms with the necessary adjustments. For Lester, whose average four-seam fastball velocity dropped to 91 mph in 2018, per Statcast, executing a game plan has become essential.

"Obviously, as I've gotten older, I've had to rely more on the execution," Lester said. "But I feel like I'm just a more complete pitcher now than I was even five years ago, six years ago. So yeah, you adapt, you learn."

Last season, Lester maintained his approach of leaning mostly on four-seamers and cutters. The tweaks in usage came within the rest of his arsenal. Lester upped his curveball rate to 15.7 percent (similar to 2015), made the changeup his fourth pitch and dropped his sinker percentage to 4.9 (down from 11.8 percent in '17). In the current era, hitters have learned to lift two-seamers, so that change by Lester fits within a larger trend.

Lester does not like to dive too deep into the numbers, though.

"An out's an out. It's always been an out," Lester said. "I'm sure you could probably go back to Hall of Fame pitchers and break down Barrel rates and hard contacts and FIPs and all this other stuff. But at the end of the year, you know, 18-6 with a [3.32 ERA] is pretty good."

So, it seems fair to assume Lester is not worrying too much about any preseason projections.

"Apparently we're just old and ready to be on the backside of our careers," Lester said. "I'll let a computer program tell me whether or not I'm going to be good this year. We'll have to play out 162 [games] and see."