Arrieta had better offers, but wanted the Cubs, the last playoff victory and other Cubs bullets

Arrieta had better offers, but wanted the Cubs, the last playoff victory and other Cubs bullets

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The Little Girl, who will always be the Little Girl for the purposes of this space, today turns 10. That, in itself, is an incredible and wonderful thing, but it also has a little to do with this place – it was her arrival that made me take stock of life, leave the law firm and decide to do BN full time. Thank you for that, my dear, and very happy birthday.

• The Cubs will soon have to formalize the signings of Jake Marisnick and Jake Arrieta (hey, both are called Jake!), A time when they will have to clear two spots on the list of 40 players. Except for a surprise exchange, we will see the Cubs trying to trick some guys through exemptions.

• According Jon Heyman (who seems to communicate frequently with agent Scott Boras), Jake Arrieta “had better offers elsewhere, but he loved the idea of ​​a meeting with the Cubs and sought it out.” It just makes you smile.

• It is incredible that three years ago this weekend, the Cubs hired Yu Darvish, apparently preferring him at the time to rehiring Jake Arrieta (although there were reports that the Cubs made a similar offer to Arrieta to stay). Now, three years later, the Cubs have negotiated with Darvish and are bringing Arrieta back. It was kind of crazy how it worked, even though the two clearly had very different paths in recent years. Nobody is projecting Arrieta’s performance in 2021 to to replace Darvish’s expected performance (don’t prepare for that kind of disappointment – the realistic hope is that Arrieta can be a stable pitcher, close to the league average, with periodic hits and periodic excellent matches).

• This is crazy and also depressing:

• I was in that game against the Dodgers – it was the game that Javy Báez hit the home run (and another one) and Willson Contreras hit one for O’Hare – and Arrieta was fantastic, and we kind of knew it could be his farewell:

(Photo by Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

• Not that the various reports should be doubtful, but you can consider it confirmed that Jake Arrieta is returning to the Cubs, assuming the physical checks:

• Thank you again:

• ECA. That time of year has come: the pitchers appear for the camp, begin to pitch a little more aggressively, and some of them realize that something is wrong. Get ready. It happens every year:

• Bummer for the Hall of Fame weekend:

• I am not surprised that the MLB is reiterating this, because it has been somewhat underreported:

• Whoopsiedoodle:

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