Chicago Cubs Will Rely On Jake Arrieta As An Ace In 2015
Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
With the end of the 2014 season just around the corner, the Chicago Cubs will be reevaluating their starting roster in order to prepare for next year. One thing the Cubs will look to improve next year will be their pitching staff.
The Cubs had a starting rotation that looked like two sides of a coin. Throughout the entire 2014 season, Chicago had two of the best pitchers in all of baseball and two of the worst pitchers in all of baseball.
The ace of the staff, however, was none other than former top-end prospect Jake Arrieta. Arrieta has always possessed the stuff of an ace, but as Cubs fans realized in 2013, he didn’t always have the greatest control in the world.
In 2013, Arrieta had 41 walks in 75 and 1/3 innings pitched and in 2014 he threw the same amount of walks in more than double the innings. This means Arrieta went from walking a man about every two innings to two about every four innings. That kind of improved control turned Arrieta’s rough-looking 4.84ERA in 2013 into a sparkling 2.26 in 2014. If he would have had enough innings to qualify among ERA league leaders, he would have the sixth lowest ERA in all of baseball.
There is one other thing that will help Arrieta maintain his dominance in the coming years and that is his ability to strike players out. The 28-year-old recorded 167 strikeouts over the course of his 156.2 innings pitched. That is not only a career-high for strikeouts, but it’s the best strikeout-per-inning ratio in his career.
Arrieta made his way into MLB as a ground-ball pitcher, but now the right-hander is playing to his strength, and that is power pitching. If you watched any of Arrieta’s 2014 season, you saw the development of his slider/cutter that made his 93 MPH fastball look like it’s coming in at 98.
Arrieta isn’t a free agent until 2018, so the club has plenty of years and Chicago is going to need them if they hope to be competitive in the coming years.
Matthew Haines is a Chicago Cubs writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @mhaine86 , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google
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