[adinserter block=”2″]Chicago Cubs ace and reigning Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta made his Spring Training debut yesterday, dominating the Cleveland Indians for the requisite two innings. The limit there, of course, was just a natural part of the building up process for pitchers in Spring Training, though it did make me chuckle thinking about how overwhelmingly ridiculous Arrieta would be as a one-inning reliever.
Although the game was not televised, we are fortunate that some highlights have been made available to see Arrieta’s day in action, and the overhead view actually provides a really nice different angle for seeing just how impressive Arrieta is:
Because of Arrieta’s crossfire delivery, you can pretty easily see how hard it must be for batters to pick up the ball (which is to say nothing of how hard he throws it and how nasty the movement can be). Also, though, you can appreciate in that video how difficult it must be for Arrieta to repeat his mechanics and command his pitches as well as he does – very few pitchers could actually pull that off, and I understand why the Orioles tried to breed it out of him, even if that was ultimately a mistake. Thankfully, the Cubs let Arrieta just be Arrieta, and the results speak for themselves.
And if you want to see Arrieta discussing his outing, you can watch this: