Will Maddon's careful approach with Arrieta pay off tonight?
SAN FRANCISCO — The Chicago Cubs had a “handle with care” approach with their starting pitchers this season.
It started near the all-star break with the insertion of a sixth starter into the rotation and continued with carefully managed workloads down the stretch.
The goals were twofold: to keep the starters healthy and to get a big payoff in the playoffs.
It's the playoffs now, and the Cubs are up two games to none over the San Francisco Giants in the National League division series.
Jake Arrieta pitches Game 3 Monday night against Giants ace Madison Bumgarner with a chance to propel the Cubs into the championship series with a sweep.
Because of the approach taken by manager Joe Maddon and pitching coach Chris Bosio, Arrieta's innings dropped from a career-high 229 in the regular season last year (plus 19⅔ more in the postseason) to 197⅓ this year.
“Yeah, and it's always tough to rein in a thoroughbred,” Maddon said Sunday at AT&T Park, where the Cubs worked out lightly. “They all want to pitch. They all want to play. They want to throw more pitches. They want to be on five-man rotation from the first day to the last. And you just have to listen to that.
“But at some point you got to know what's the right thing to do, and we talked about this, but I think it's really wise to consider a six-man before and right after the all-star break. I think that's the perfect time to — if you have that guy.
“But if you can somehow finagle that extra guy from your system or really be proactive in the off-season to get that balance in the middle of the season, you saw what happened to us prior to the all-star break. We weren't very good. And that was just a fatigue situation. Nothing to do with anything else.”
The problem for Arrieta is the constant comparison between this season and last, when he won the Cy Young with a record of 22-6 with an ERA of 1.77 and a WHIP of 0.87.
This year's numbers weren't bad by any stretch: 18-8 with an ERA of 3.10 and a WHIP of 1.08.
Arrieta battled with his command much of the year, and he walked 76 batters compared with 48 last year. But he did throw a no-hitter in each of the two seasons.
So how does he digest the regular season this year?
“Well, from a numbers perspective, I would have liked maybe to be a little bit better,” he said Sunday. “But at the same time, (I) took the ball every five days, had a lot of great things throughout the season to be excited about. Some things that I've wanted to work on to improve on, obviously, especially in this point in the season.
“But at the same time, I've prepared the same way from start to finish and really like the process and trust the stuff moving forward and know that it's more than good enough to have a lot of success for this team in the postseason.”
Arrieta has said he's pitching against the Giants' lineup and not against Bumgarner. Still, he says he knows the pitching matchup is a good one.
“He's a tremendous pitcher,” Arrieta said. “He's got a lot of deception. He's got plus stuff. He really knows how to pitch, and he's a guy who really seems to shine brightest in the postseason when the games matter the most. So he's been one of the best in the postseason for the last several years.
“We have got a challenge ahead of us, but we put ourselves in a really good position, obviously taking care of business at home with the opportunity to close the series out in three games and get back to Chicago and prepare.”
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