Position Rank: 7th
Current ADP: 32.63
Jake Arrieta's 2015 Cy Young performance was out of this world. It was so good, in fact, that it was a really tough act to follow -- although he did a pretty good job.
Fresh off posting a 22-6 record with a 1.77 ERA, 0.87 WHIP and 2.35 Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) over 229 frames, the right-hander put together another performance in 2016 that's deserving to be mentioned with some of the league's best.
After all, he finished 9th in National League Cy Young voting thanks to an 18-8 record, 3.10 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 3.25 FIP and an 8.7 K/9 in 197.1 innings of work. His current position as the 7th starting pitching coming off the board in the 3rd round of 12-team leagues is justified, right?
It certainly is, but the concern here is exactly how he arrived at those numbers. For a while, it was shaping up to be a two-horse race for NL Cy Young honors between Arrieta and Clayton Kershaw, and then something happened -- Arrieta started looking mortal.
| Month | Record | ERA | FIP | IP | K/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 5-0 | 1.00 | 2.92 | 36.0 | 8.0 |
| May | 4-0 | 2.08 | 2.58 | 39.0 | 9.9 |
| June | 3-2 | 3.54 | 2.75 | 28.0 | 11.6 |
| July | 0-3 | 4.88 | 3.88 | 31.1 | 8.0 |
| August | 4-0 | 3.21 | 5.29 | 33.2 | 5.9 |
| Sept./Oct. | 2-3 | 4.60 | 3.83 | 29.1 | 8.9 |
He outperformed his peripherals during the early months, while it appears he experienced some tough luck later on, but the concerning trend is with his control and how often he was surrendering homers.
After never posting a walks-per-nine-innings rate (BB/9) below 2.5 in a single season, he did it in each of his first two seasons upon arriving to the Cubs (2.36 in 2014, 1.89 in 2015) before watching it jump back up to 3.47 this past year (including 3.69 in the second half).
He had a similar trajectory in homers allowed per nine innings (HR/9) -- it was never below 0.8 in a single season before his breakout with Chicago (0.29 in 2014, 0.39 in 2015) before regressing to 0.73 in 2016, which is closer to his career average (0.78).
Could this be because of an incredible workload, which has included 583 innings since the start of 2014 (not including the playoffs)? It's possible. As we noted earlier this winter, he needs to hit on the high side of his expected range of incomes to justify his current ADP, which seems overly optimistic at this point.