REPORT: Chicago Cubs and Jake Arrieta avoid arbitration with $10.7 million deal

We’re only 13 days until pitchers and catchers report to training camp in Mesa, Arizona for the Chicago Cubs and one of their biggest arbitration-eligible players has finally agreed on a one-year deal.

Both the Cubs and ace right-hander Jake Arrieta had a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 9 and were supposedly five million apart from what Chicago originally offered the N.L. Cy Young winner.

This just so happened to be the largest gap in a pool of players who went back and forth with their clubs. With a handful of players looking to avoid arbitration, the Cubs went ahead and offered the soon-to-be 30-year-old hurler $7.5 million last month.

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Don’t get me wrong, the man absolutely deserves everything he can get. The business side of professional sports, on the other hand, has and can get ugly when it comes to money.

Now according to CSN Chicago, the Cubs and Jake Arrieta have agreed on a one-year deal worth $10.7 million, which is close to what he was asking for in return. That was around $13 million, a significant raise compared to the $3.63 million he made during the 2015 campaign.

But after the season he had, there could be talks of a long-term deal throughout the new campaign. There’s no doubt he’s a huge piece of this puzzle that reached the National League Championship Series this past season but will he get offered what Jon Lester received last winter?

The former Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletic signed a six-year deal worth $155 million which kept him from returning to Boston after they traded him away. He does, however, have an option for 2021 that could raise it up to $170 over seven years if he chose to do so.

If they continue to win and eventually bring home a World Series title from this season until the final year of his contract, there’s a very strong possibility that he’ll opt to use it to stick around for what should be his final season in 2021.

Still, Arrieta is under team control for a little longer, but Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer could do everything in their power to push the right deal to his agent, Scott Boras, depending on how well he’s performing during the first half of the season.

He’s prepared to eat up as many innings as he possibly can after doing so in 2015.