This is a weird thing to say about a pitcher who dominated like a fiend en route to winning the National League Cy Young in 2015, but here goes:
Jake Arrieta appears to be just fine, thank you very much.
The 30-year-old right-hander looked very much like his 2015 self in the Chicago Cubs' season-opening 9-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Monday night. He pitched seven shutout innings with two hits allowed, one walk and six strikeouts.
To put a finer point on it, Arrieta hasn't looked this good since the second half of 2015. That's when he was busy compiling an all-time-great 0.75 ERA in 15 starts, a stretch that lowered his overall ERA to a Cy Young-worthy 1.77 across 229 innings.
And though there was never too much doubt about Arrieta's ability to get back to emasculating hitters, Monday night's outing is still worth an exhale and a "Phew..."
There was a rough patch in between Arrieta's best days in 2015 and his 2016 debut, after all. He ran out of gas last October, losing effectiveness and, in a related story, velocity. He was then held back this spring and struggled with his command by walking six batters in 11.1 innings. And at one point, a blister on his right thumb was casting an ominous specter over his Opening Day assignment.
None of these signs pointed toward outright doom for Arrieta in 2016. But to borrow words from Dayn Perry of CBS Sports, the notion of him suffering from a "workload hangover" had to be given the time of day. Heck, even Joe Maddon was trying to keep expectations in check.
"Just understand, it's going to be very difficult for him to do what he did last year," the Cubs skipper told Bruce Miles of the Daily Herald. "I still expect that he's going to pitch extremely well. But that was unworldly a little bit in the second half of the year. I would not anticipate that many innings out of him again. I think it's really important that we temper that."
But his current 2016 workload, such as it is, makes Arrieta's future look positively peachy.
So much for any concerns about him carrying over last October's velocity dip. Per the raw data at Brooks Baseball, he sat around 94.5 mph with his heat on Monday night. That's a tick above the 94.1 mph he averaged last October and right in line with the velocity he had last April.
Also, so much for any concerns about Arrieta carrying over his spring training command struggles. Beyond the one walk, he threw 64 of his 89 pitches for strikes. They were good strikes, too, as he mainly worked lefty batters away and righty batters around the outside corner.
And though he didn't really need to prove this part, Arrieta's stuff was also in good shape. He confirmed as much when he made Mike Trout, perhaps the most dangerous hitter in the American League, look like a chump with this beauty:
This seemingly impossibly good pitch is Arrieta's changeup, which is actually his fourth-best pitch. That was one of only three changeups he threw against the Angels, but the sheer quality of that pitch brings up something Arrieta told Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic (h/t Brett Taylor of Bleacher Nation).
"I'm becoming more comfortable with [the changeup], it's gotten better every year," he said, adding:
But to stay sharp with it, you need to work on it on a consistent basis. I use it a lot in my side sessions. It was a pitch for me that I could use from time to time and get some big outs. I want to be able to have that and establish it in just about every start. Just to kind of have another look that guys have to worry about.
Arrieta really didn't start leaning on his changeup last season until September, but it paid off in a flurry of whiffs when he did. If he has more changeups like the one he fooled Trout with, it wouldn't be out of the blue if the pitch became a larger part of his dominant routine.
And if not, oh well.
Arrieta still has his military-grade slider and curveball, and those pitches were also in fine form against the Angels. Arrieta got whiffs on a quarter of the breaking balls he threw, which is in line with what he did last year and then some. And even when the Angels made contact against him, they had a hard time getting the ball out of the infield.
In all, Monday looks like just the latest chapter in the story about how hard it is to doubt Arrieta's career revival with the Cubs.
The former Baltimore Oriole might have been a fluke when he broke through in 2014, but his 2015 season nixed that idea. And though it was possible to question if Arrieta's efforts last season took too much out of him, for now the answer is "not yet."
If it stays that way, this enormously hyped Cubs team might just be the championship contender the masses want it to be.
The Cubs may have the best lineup in the National League—if not all of Major League Baseball—but the road to their first World Series title in 108 years is going to go through NL aces like Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Gerrit Cole and Adam Wainwright. If Arrieta can remain his best self, the Cubs will have just the guy to match up against them.
After what he did Monday night, the Cubs must be feeling confident in Arrieta's ability to be that guy. Now all he has to do is do it another 35-40 times, and they'll be on their way.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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