The 2016 version of Arrieta decreased his slider usage by over 10 percentage points. If you watched him pitch at full speed, you may not even notice the difference. All of those things that I just pointed out that Arrieta did right in 2015? He also used a four seam fastball and a changeup minimally throughout the season (7.4% and 4.5% respectively). Arrieta’s numbers over his last 10 starts are hard to fathom. Jake Arrieta burst onto the national stage with an impressive and historic 2015 season. With his contract expiring following this season, Arrieta will surely be inspired to have a good season. It kept hitters guessing, and it meant that a lot of the time he was working ahead in the count. Once in a blue moon though, a hurler will complete such an utterly dominant campaign that there has to be an exception. New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom is day-to-day after leaving his start Wednesday night with a right hamstring spasm. Phillies righthander Jake Arrieta will not pitch again in the regular season because of a strained right hamstring. His first big paycheck is looming following the season, or perhaps earlier if the Cubs are able to strike a deal on an extension. With runners on first and third and two outs in the seventh, Abreu beat out a grounder to shortstop Jorge Polanco to send home Jarrod Dyson with the tying run. Frankly, he can’t even start envisioning the thought of polishing a 2015 NL Cy Young award trophy; there’s still time for other candidates to overtake him. He did, after all, have a no-hitter during the early part of this season. However, up until this moment, Arrieta has had the best overall season for a pitcher in the NL. Five Major League Baseball games have now been moved due to wildfires. The righthander was pulled after only 40 pitches and one strikeout. Arrieta used his sinker 43.6% of the time, slider 29.5%, and curveball 14.9%. The Cy Young version of Arrieta greatly varied his pitch selection. Manager Joe Girardi said on Thursday that Arrieta could return to the rotation if the Phillies make the playoffs. His 2014 season was a step in the right direction, but 2015 showed what he could achieve when everything came together. Sorry Red Sox Fans, Boston Won’t Be Signing Trevor Bauer, In a battle of Will Smiths, the Dodgers come out victorious to stay alive, In a must-win Game 5, Dodgers feel confident in 23-year-old Dustin May, Corey Seager continues a special 2020, and a special postseason, Elon Musk’s 2 Rules For Learning Anything Faster, Two Amazon Developers Created a $24.9 Billion Amazon Killer. It was a historically great season that was helped by a run in the latter half of the year that was simply remarkable. The 34-year-old is 110-79 with a 3.76 ERA dating to 2010 with Baltimore, the Cubs and Phillies. Some of it was physical, and some of it was mental. One of the top story lines going into the postseason will almost surely be the Cubs improbable dream of FINALLY winning the World Series. The numbers indicate that this is the case. While this is very far from the truth, Arrieta has made Cubs manager Joe Maddon’s job 100 times easier every fifth game throughout the entire season. Arrieta himself probably noticed the change during the season, but was unable to do anything of great significance about it. Maybe it’s not having to face the designated hitter as much anymore or maybe it’s just the friendly confines of Wrigley that Arrieta finds so comforting, but whatever the case is, the difference has been startling. He used the sinker under half the time, the slider nearly a third of the time, and his curve just enough to keep hitters guessing. He wasn’t reliant on a single pitch, and he used off-speed just about as often as he used his speedier stuff. It’s been well-documented just how much the franchise has been deprived of championship glory. As a result, hitters swung at less pitches out of the zone, he walked more batters, and the pitches in the zone were easier to hit hard.