Arrieta comes up gold again in Golden State

SAN DIEGO — Jake Arrieta won’t get a chance to pitch at Dodger Stadium in the Cubs’ upcoming series but on Tuesday night, he showed once again how much he likes the West Coast.

Arrieta picked up his National League-leading 16th win in a 5-3 victory over the Padres, giving up two hits over eight scoreless innings. In four starts in California this year against the Angels, Giants, Athletics and Padres, Arrieta has given up one run on 11 hits over 30 innings combined. And he’s won all four of those games.

“His fastball command kept getting better game in progress,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said of the outing against the Padres. “That was really reminiscent of last year.”

Last year, Arrieta won the Cy Young Award. This year, his stiffest competition may come from teammate, Kyle Hendricks, who has a 2.16 ERA.

But it wasn’t just better command that helped Arrieta. Give the defense, specifically middle infielders Addison Russell and Javier Baez, credit as well as catcher Willson Contreras, who got the web gems started when he picked off Travis Jankowski at third base in the first. Jankowski had …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *