RAPID IMPROVEMENT
Lethal fastball has Cubs' Arrieta now among best in baseball
This is not the Orioles’ Jake Arrieta. “The biggest difference in him is fastball command. Period,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said of his Cy Young Award quality starter who is aligned for Game 2 of the NLCS against the Mets Sunday. “He knows where his fastball is going.”
The fastball sets up the other pitches and that has set up Arrieta for a season of historic proportions. Using a varied array of pitches with a deadly slider/cutter, the Cubs righty who pitched from 201013 for Baltimore, was 226 with a 1.77 ERA this season. According to Elias Sports Bureau, that made him only the fifth pitcher with at least 22 wins with a sub2.00 ERA since ERA became an official stat before World War I (1912 in the NL, 1913 in the AL).
But those aren’t even the most impressive numbers. Arrieta posted a ridiculous 0.75 ERA and was 121 with two shutouts in the second half, the best numbers since the AllStar Game began in 1933. And from Aug. 4 to the end of the season, he was 110 with a 0.41 ERA, the best numbers ever.
Yeah, but he did walk 14 guys in that stretch…
Arrieta did, however, throw a career high 229 innings before working in the postseason as well. Maddon noted how much of Arrieta’s work was low stress because he only averaged slightly more than 15 pitches an inning. Arrieta himself claimed the mental was harder than the physical.
“The mental expenditure of energy,” Arrieta labeled the toughest part of pitching through a season. “Throughout the course of the day you start to contemplate your routine and think about the game in different scenarios, and … that heart rate starts to rise a little bit.” Yeah, well think of the guys facing him. “You start to get that anxious energy, that excitement, and trying to find a way to relax, and trying to calm that down before you get to the ballpark,” Arrieta said. “The physical toll really hasn’t bothered me at all, but the mental side of it and all the energy you burn leading up to the game does have a little bit of effect. But having a couple of these under my belt now, I’m pretty confident going in that I’ll be able to handle that pretty well.”
Yeah, that’s just what the Mets want to hear. The Mets just went through a series facing Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke twice each. And now the hard part starts with the Cubs’ Jon Lester and Arrieta, who was acquired in 2013 from the Orioles with Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger.
“The mentality is ‘Oh, [expletive] we’ve got to do it again,” said Mets manager Terry Collins. “But they’re different kind of pitchers.”
And the Mets are different than what Arrieta has seen in the past.
“The biggest thing is just to kind of do some scouting, watch some video, have some familiarity with [Yoenis] Cespedes,” Arrieta said. “Obviously an extremely, extremely balanced hitter. Good power, hits for average. He’s helped the lineup a lot. They’ve got David Wright back. So it’s a different look. Still know these guys fairly well. They have some young players who are playing really well, and they’ve been throwing the ball well, too. So this is kind of what you expect in a Championship Series.”
And you can expect pitchers like Arrieta.