Jake Arrieta is a wealthier man than he was last week. After waiting out an unusually slow and austere free agent market, the 2015 NL Cy Young signed a three-year, $75 million contract with the Phillies. While the 32-year-old had an impressive four and a half year stay in Chicago (68-31, 2.73 ERA, 147 ERA+), there is still cause for concern. Firstly, he's a pitcher; they're designed to break. More to the point, in the last two seasons his walks and home runs allowed have risen
while his cutter has been less effective. Obviously, he was so absurdly unhittable in 2015 that the backslide of 2016-2017 still saw him pitch better than, say, any Orioles starter. (Grumble grumble groan.) But the pessimist in me was sure that if hell froze over and the O's and Jake agreed to reunite, he would've immediately fallen apart. So I'm perversely relieved that he's staying in the National League. We'll see how I feel in June when the Birds are back to shuffling the likes of Mike Wright, Jr. and Gabriel Ynoa in and out of the rotation.
2 comments:
So true on the shuffling of players. They must have a shuttle bus lined up that as soon as a starter pitches in Baltimore get on the shuttle back to Norfolk drop him off and pick up the next starter. This way they have 10 starters to throw at other teams and hope one of them get thru 5 innings.
Alan - Duquette practically salivates over pitchers with minor league options for exactly that reason.
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