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REMATCH

Major league wins leader Jake Arrieta starts for the Cubs against Mets rookie Noah Syndergaard in Game 2 of the NL Championship Series at Citi Field. Syndergaard lost his major league debut 6-1 to Arrieta at Wrigley Field in May. ”I just feel like a completely different pitcher now,” he said. Arrieta went 22-6 with a 1.77 ERA this season and is 2-0 with a 2.45 ERA and 20 strikeouts in two playoff starts.

RELAX

The Royals and Blue Jays have a day off in the AL Championship Series, with Kansas City holding a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven matchup. The teams are set for workouts at Rogers Centre. Game 3 is Monday night in Toronto when Johnny Cueto will start for KC against Marcus Stroman.

MONEY SWINGS

Daniel Murphy has homered in three straight postseason games, matching the Mets record set by Donn Clendenon in 1969. The free agent-to-be has hit four home runs in these playoffs – by taking Clayton Kershaw (twice), Zack Greinke and Jon Lester deep, the second baseman has tagged $517 million worth of pitchers in barely over a week.

COOL IT

Gloves as well as mittens might be in order when the Cubs take on the Mets. The gametime temperature at Citi Field will probably be in the 40s, and it’s supposed to drop into the 30s at night in New York. No such worries in chilly Toronto – the retractable roof will keep things toasty enough.

The post LEADING OFF: Arrieta-Syndergaard in Game 2 of NLCS, ALCS off appeared first on IdealCapper.

The Cubs right-hander didn’t wake up one morning and discover a magic grip or even find an extra 5 mph on his fastball. The closest he came to an epiphany was two years ago as he shuttled between the big league Orioles and their minor league affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia, wrestling with the possibility that his talents were used up.

Arrieta was 27.

“There was this moment in Triple-A where I didn’t want to play anymore,” he said. “This game beats you up, makes you feel sometimes like you’re not good enough. For a couple months, I was in a mindset, ‘This is hurting my life off the field and I’m way too worried about this game. It’s affecting me, mentally, way too much.'”

Up close, it’s easy to see the intensity that’s unnerved National League hitters for the better part of two seasons. Just recalling that time, though, puts Arrieta on edge; he leans in and fidgets with the buckle on an expensive watch.

“I was tired of the frustration, tired of this thing I couldn’t control. … And you know what, I talk to my wife about the same stuff every so often, even now. Stuff like, ‘What are we going to do, what kind of business could we start when we’re done playing?’

“The big difference,” he added a moment later, “is that those were serious conversations a couple of years ago.”

Instead of giving up, Arrieta doubled down. He treated the five days between starts getting ready for opponents the way an NFL team would.

He broke down the process familiar to every pitcher at every level of the game — preparation, scouting, mechanics, delivery, release — and made himself stronger in every phase. Arrieta’s daily workout regimen was the subject of clubhouse envy when he arrived in July 2013. Soon after he began working with Chicago pitching coach Chris Bosio, so were his off-day sessions throwing on the side.

“I remember going over the scouting reports,” Bosio said, “and thinking it had a lot to do with how he was attacking hitters. The league was hitting .460 on his first pitch, something like .570 when he got to a 1-1 count. … With Jake, we started on the sequencing stuff — what to throw when — and he was tireless. He’d practice it over and over in the bullpen, so he owned it before he’d use it in a game.”

The resulting confidence eased Arrieta’s fixation on mechanics. He refined every aspect of his delivery from shoulder turn to fingertip release, then repeated it until that, too, was second nature. Gradually, his fastball got faster and his breaking stuff a lot filthier.

And his stats got a lot better, a huge reason the Cubs are solidly in playoff contention. Arrieta leads the majors with 18 wins, and ranks near the top with a 2.03 ERA while averaging more than a strikeout per inning.

Long before his Aug. 30 no-hitter against the Dodgers turned every start into must-see TV — Arrieta next pitches Thursday night at Philadelphia — and even longer before he elbowed his way into the Cy Young conversation, Arrieta had already made believers of the guys he played alongside and against.

“Even when he makes a mistake, it’s a 97 mph pitch with cut down the middle,” Arizona’s A.J. Pollock said. “It’s a different mistake.”

This was right after Arrieta yielded just four hits in a 2-0 win against the Diamondbacks in his first start since the no-hitter. Two of those came in the first inning. Someone asked whether he was relieved the pressure of another no-hitter was off so soon.

“I would have preferred to not give up any hits,” Arrieta said earnestly. “But those guys are good.”

Even so, Arrieta had all the answers. He throws his changeup, on average, less than 10 percent of the time, but after watching the Diamondbacks sit on his fastballs, he threw the changeup in three tight spots in the fourth inning to strike out Paul Goldschmidt and Jarrod Saltalamacchia and fool David Peralta into a groundout.

An hour after that, the Chicago locker room is nearly empty and Arrieta is considering a final question: How much better can he get? It’s something he’s thought about a lot. Every part of the process, he said, is still open to review.

“Nobody can repeat their delivery perfectly for 120 pitches,” he said. “But the closer you can get, the better you’re going to command the ball from start to finish. At the end of the day, good stuff is great, velocity is great, good breaking stuff is crucial to having a lot of success here.

“But commanding the baseball,” Arrieta said finally, “is the most important variable in pitching.”

The post No overnight sensation, Arrieta rises to the top at own pace appeared first on IdealCapper.

Finally, it happened. And near Hollywood, no less.

Arrieta threw the second no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 10 days, leading the Cubs to a 2-0 victory Sunday night.

He struck out a season-high 12 and walked one, becoming just the third opposing pitcher to achieve a no-hitter at Dodger Stadium.

“He’s starting to create more buzz around him,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “To do it under these circumstances, in this ballpark, against this team, with a pretty good audience, that should pretty much put him on everybody’s radar.”

With 46,679 in attendance — including his wife and two kids — and a national television audience looking in, Arrieta became the first 17-game winner in the majors this season by throwing the 14th no-hitter in Cubs history.

“It’s something that everybody wants,” he said. “It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. I’ve been close on a couple of occasions, and tonight I was just fortunate that everything aligned right.”

Last year, Arrieta (17-6) became the first Cubs pitcher since 1950 to take a no-hitter into the seventh inning three times in one season. He tossed a one-hit shutout against Cincinnati last Sept. 16 at Wrigley Feld, allowing his first hit to Brandon Phillips with one out in the eighth.

Arrieta had a then career-high 10 wins last season after going 4-2 in nine starts for the Cubs in 2013, when he was acquired from Baltimore that July.

At 29, he’s blossoming a little later than some big league pitchers.

“Right now, he’s pitching at a different level, and he deserves it,” Maddon said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody work any harder. He has come a long way from Baltimore, where he really had command issues with the fastball but always had good stuff.”

Arrieta sensed his time was ending with the Orioles, who had drafted him in 2007 out of Texas Christian and called him up to the majors in 2010. He quickly found a home with the Cubs, who embraced the low-key Texan.

“The comfort level was there from the get-go, so it was a seamless transition,” he said. “I came over here and started doing some things I knew I was capable of doing to help me be more consistent. The momentum just continued to roll.”

Kris Bryant’s two-run homer in the first gave Arrieta a quick boost, and all the offense he would need.

The right-hander was sharp early against the Dodgers, retiring the first seven batters he faced before he got some help toward his no-hitter from the official scorer.

Jerry White charged Starlin Castro with an error when Kike Hernandez reached on a one-hopper hit right at the second baseman in the third, although several players on both sides believed it should have been ruled a hit.

Arrieta thought so, too.

“He hit it pretty well. I think (the call) could have gone either way,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that it was an error until I think an inning or two later. It was kind of out of sight, out of mind. But even if it was a hit, I would have kept the same mindset.”

White gave the error after Castro tried to make the play on an in-between hop. The ball bounced off him and rolled away, allowing Hernandez to reach first.

“The ball was hit right at him and he didn’t have to move to make the play,” White said. “I had no thought even at the time to change it.”

Arrieta was undeterred, despite a two-out walk in the sixth to Jimmy Rollins. Arrieta finished strongly, striking out the side in the ninth, when Maddon thought it was a little too quiet in the dugout.

“There was a respectful buzz. Nobody was too loud,” the manager said. “Our guys are really a closely knit group.”

In the Dodgers’ dugout, starter Alex Wood, a 24-year-old with two years in the majors, studied Arrieta.

“He’s ahead of almost every hitter,” Wood said. “When you get a guy like that who’s pumping strikes and has all three of his pitches working well, it’s a tough situation.”

Making history proved a fitting ending to August for Arrieta, who was 6-0 with a 0.43 ERA in the month, allowing just two earned runs in 42 1-3 innings. He’s 11-1 on the road with a 1.76 ERA in 15 starts away from Wrigley Field.

“For those of us who are around Jake all the time, it’s not surprising at all,” Maddon said. “It’s a combination of Jake’s skill, his drive and who he is.”

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