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Chicago Cubs: Ranking Jake Arrieta’s most memorable home runs
In a dreadful offseason filled with departures of fan favorites, and trade rumors running rampant around other key names, the Chicago Cubs finally gave us something to get excited about, signing beloved starter Jake Arrieta to a one-year, $6 million deal.
It was a move that may allow Arrieta to retire with the team with whom he won the 2015 NL Cy Young award and became a massive piece of the most important team in franchise history.
Arrieta is, of course, most known for his pitching in Chicago. The righty was acquired in a famously lopsided trade from Baltimore along with fellow fan favorite Pedro Strop, in exchange for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger. In Arrieta’s four full seasons afterwards, he started 119 games, had a 2.67 ERA, 1.028 WHIP, 0.6 HR/9, 2.6 BB/9 and a 9.1 K/9. You’d be hard pressed to find a better four-year stretch from a Cubs starter.
Another thing about Arrieta that drew people to him, was how formidable he was with the bat. 2016 in particular was unbelievable in terms of pitchers hitting as he slashed .262/.304/.415 with a .719 OPS. Arrieta also hit six home runs in his Cubs career and three of them, in particular, stand out.
Cubs: Let’s go back to 2015. You never forget your first.
Arrieta’s first career home run was representative of the Cubs’ successes that were to come in the next few years. It was the middle of the summer during the indescribably fun 2015 season and the young upstart team was taking the league by storm.
Everything about that season just felt magical and the breakout Arrieta taking Sox lefty Jose Quintana (Who was in the midst of a 3.36 season) felt like an exclamation point on the 2015 campaign and a sign of what was to come.
Cubs had plenty of iconic moments in 2016 – including this blast
Moving to April 2016, and times have rapidly changed. The Cubs are coming off a 97-win season that ended in defeat in the NLCS and, as for Arrieta, he was coming off his insane second half of 2015 that he rode to the NL Cy Young award.
The Cubs now had the pressure of being expected contenders.
The front office had gone all-in by grabbing John Lackey and Jason Heyward in the offseason, signifying that the time to compete was now. The Cubs were no longer underdogs, but contenders. World Series or bust. The club was fun in 2015 because they had no expectations, but now the spotlight was on the young Cubs, and it remained to be seen if they’d crack under the weight of their expectations.
With so much pressure on such a young team, it was important for them to get off to a good start, and Arrieta had answered the bell. He was already a king in Chicago after what he did the year prior the North Side, but this monster moonshot to dead center further solidified his status in the hearts of Cubs fans everywhere.
Cubs color analyst Jim Deshaies put the 440-foot bomb off Shelby Miller in perspective when he said of Arrieta “He has officially entered superhero status.”
Cubs fans lost it when Jake Arrieta took Madison Bumgarner deep
He’ll never get a bigger hit in his life. Arrieta’s NLDS home run off postseason icon Madison Bumgarner was proof that there was magic in that 2016 run.
Arrieta had ground out a long at-bat against Bumgarner which is really all you can hope from a pitcher taking an AB, but everyone’s patience was rewarded with what was for me personally, the moment that convinced me the Cubs were going to win the World Series.
Chicago may not have won that game, but they won Game 4 with even more postseason magic to advance to the NLCS where another unlikely hero would hit a massive home run in Game 1, and the rest is history.
In an offseason that’s been a grim look to the future for Cubs fans, it’s nice to have a little piece of the past added to the equation. Arrieta may not be the same pitcher he once was, or the same hitter for that matter, but the Cubs weren’t looking all that likely to compete regardless.
Next. Cubs: When will we see the team’s top prospects in Chicago?. dark
So why not have Arrieta around to maybe retire a Cub? Hopefully the ending is as good as the rest of the story.