Did the Chicago Cubs really make a mistake not keeping Jake Arrieta?

As the self-proclaimed president of the Jake Arrieta fan club, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the team may have made the right call letting him walk in 2017.

God, it felt dirty to even type that. I have never enjoyed watching a guy pitch as much as I loved every time Jake Arrieta took the ball for the Chicago Cubs. It was more than watching a pitcher at work, it was like watching a swordsman completely overpower his opponent in both speed, strength and intelligence.

Arrieta, who turned 33 in March, helped the Cubs go from lovable losers to a perennial powerhouse. Alongside veteran left-hander Jon Lester, he led a ripe, inexperienced  2015 Cubs team to 97 wins, a National League Wild Card berth and, eventually, the team’s first NLCS appearance since 2003.

How did he do that? Only by turning in arguably the best season ever by a Chicago hurler. En route to NL Cy Young honors, Arrieta pitched to a 1.77 ERA in 33 starts, leading the league with four complete games and three shutouts – including the first no-hitter of his career against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Aug. 30.

Chicago Cubs: Dollars talk – and so does performance

Now, this is where you’re all ready to sharpen your pitchforks and come after me. Why? Easy. Darvish has been a disappointment to this point and only a fool would suggest otherwise. But given how each man has performed and how the market has played out in the year-plus to follow, it’s not a stretch to say that not giving Jake Arrieta wasn’t exactly a mistake.

Before we dive into this, let me make this clear. I am not saying Theo Epstein spent his $126 million prudently when he decided Darvish was the answer in the Cubs rotation. The jury is still very much out on that one – but the early returns haven’t been promising. I’m simply saying that Arrieta hasn’t been worth anywhere close to the $27.5 million AAV the Phillies are shelling out in the first two years of his deal.

Keep in mind, Chicago paid Arrieta just $29,967,500 from 2015 to 2017. Last year alone, the Phillies paid him $30 million and they’re ponying up an additional $25 million this season. The worst part? They’re paying him for production that’s now three to four years in the past – and the future is hardly what anyone would call promising.

Chicago Cubs: Did we dodge a bullet this time around?

Here’s a breakdown Jake Arrieta’s performance from 2016-2018. This obviously covers his final two years in Chicago and his first as a member of the Phillies. I decided comparing any player’s performance to Arrieta’s historic 2015 season was hardly a reasonable benchmark, so I omitted that year from the table below.

Jake Arrieta - By the Numbers

A breakdown of Jake Arrieta's performance, ranging from his Cy Young-winning 2015 campaign through 2018, his first season with the Philadelphia Phillies.

As you can see, his performance has been on a near-uniform decline across-the-board. His swinging strike rate has dropped nearly three percent since 2016, bottoming out last year at 7.8% – well below the league average of 9.5 percent.

When you factor in hard-hit rate (not shown in the table) – things really go sideways. In his Cy Young-winning 2015 season, Arrieta limited opponents to a 22.1 percent hard-hit rate. Last year? He clocked in at a staggering 36.2 percent mark.

Heading into Monday’s start at Wrigley Field, the bearded hurler has just 1,389 big league innings under his belt. But he’s not getting any younger and, simply put, the stuff just isn’t what it used to be. We haven’t seen him transition from overpowering ace to crafty veteran – at least not yet – in the way guys like Lester have in recent years.

Velocity and strikeout rate is down, contact rate is up and when you factor all that in, you can only reach one conclusion: things will likely to get worse, not better, as he heads into the back half of his 30s.

Chicago Cubs still have a chance to find value

Chicago will pay Darvish $18.75 million annually from 2020 to 2023. By contrast, Arrieta will earn $21.67 million through 2022 if Philadelphia picks up both of his team options for 2021 and 2022. So far, the Phillies have gotten more out of their right-hander than the Cubs have theirs.

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But the story is far from over.

If Arrieta’s velocity continues to decline and he gets less and less separation between his fastball and sinker and his offspeed stuff, he may very well trend in the direction a lot of pitchers do in their 30s.

By contrast, Darvish has some of the best swing-and-miss stuff in the league, averaging 11.8 strikeouts per nine, which would rank sixth amongst qualified MLB starters and third in the National League. Health cost him essentially his first year in Chicago – but he still has the time (and the stuff) to rewrite the narrative over the final four-and-a-half years left on the deal.

You can’t find statistics or sabermetrics to quantify the bulldog mentality someone like Jake Arrieta brings to a ballclub. Even in his final year with the Cubs, when the stuff clearly became less dominant, he stepped up when it mattered most and almost always rose to the occasion. The same cannot be said for Darvish in Chicago – at least not yet.

But if you want to feel better about Jake Arrieta pitching against the Chicago Cubs on Monday night, instead of toeing the rubber wearing the team’s home white with blue pinstripes, I think we can say with some certainty that while we miss him and will always cherish what he brought to our beloved team, the time was right for the Cubs to walk away when they did.