NEWSLETTER
The Chicago Cubs today, rather than at any time over the last two months, decided it was finally time to let Jake Arrieta go.
The decision had actually been made, and conveyed to Arrieta, immediately after his media session that followed last night’s start. He sat down with team president Jed Hoyer and manager David Ross, and they let him know what was happening.
“Obviously, [Arrieta] was struggling,” Hoyer said today, per The Athletic. “We had been patient and tried to get through it and hopefully he’d come out the other side and pitch better. But we weren’t there and thought it was the right thing to do for him if he can catch on somewhere. Maybe a change of scenery would help him. For us, it just seemed like the right time.”
Maybe so. And maybe Arrieta will indeed catch on with another club – now would certainly be the time to release a guy if you wanted to give him a fair chance to put something together before the end of the season. I tend to think that won’t happen, but that doesn’t mean the Cubs don’t want to at least give him a chance.
Still, you wonder why THIS was the week things finally changed for the Cubs. After all, Arrieta had been unplayable for a very long time before yesterday.
Consider that the Cubs had already publicly declared an intention to go with a six-man rotation to ease the load on their pitchers, but didn’t actually make it fully through the six-man group before releasing Arrieta. So we know that something changed. Maybe it was the disastrous outing as the final straw, or maybe it was Arrieta’s mask comments (Hoyer declined comment), or maybe it was the accumulated frustration that had almost certainly built up on all sides behind the scenes. I tend to think it was a lot of stuff, and the decision just seemed pretty easy after last night.
The question now is what happens with the rotation, as the Cubs could stick with a six-man group and insert a bullpen day, or could bring up Keegan Thompson right away. I don’t know that he’s quite as stretched out as the Cubs were looking for – certainly not as stretched out as Justin Steele was when he came up – but maybe the Cubs will decide it’s just better to do it now for whatever reason.
Even with Arrieta (and Steele and Thompson), I was kinda wondering if we would see the Cubs eventually winding down the innings for guys like Adbert Alzolay and Kyle Hendricks, who are very important for 2022, and are seeing huge innings jumps from last year. Doing that without Arrieta is a little trickier, but the Cubs have some depth guys at Iowa they could bring up to take starts if it came to that. Cory Abbott, for example, or Mike Hauschild or Joe Biagini – if they are guys you know you aren’t keeping on the 40-man all offseason anyway, then it kinda doesn’t matter who you choose; you can choose whoever you think has earned a shot.
As for Arrieta, he’ll remain a legend in the history of the Cubs, even if there will now always be a “oh man, but do you remember 2021?” attached to discussions of his greatness. It was just a very bad year. In every way you could evaluate it, a total disaster.
