With Jake Arrieta now 9-0 with a tasty 1.56 ERA. He’s coming off a 2015 season where he went 22-6 and a similar 1.77. Barring injury, there’s nothing indicating he won’t duplicate these numbers again.
Yet, Arrieta isn’t on any of the rosters of the Illowa APBA League. Why? Like many leagues, once the IAL rookie draft is over, those who are not chosen are permanently out of pool (with some exceptions). Quite simply, we had our chance and blew it. (Disclaimer: other leagues have different drafting rules than ours)
Looking at Arrieta’s career stats, he didn’t have a stellar rookie year for Baltimore with six wins and a 4.66 ERA. With all of the quality pitching that floods our draft, our managers didn’t see him as a prospect. His ERAs the next two years were 5.05 and 6.20 respectively so we all assumed we didn’t miss out on much. History obviously proved different.
Don’t get me wrong. The IAL usually gets it right with rookie prospects. However, we have missed a few players. David Ortiz, Dallas Keuchel, R.A. Dickey, and Corey Kluber have fallen through the cracks. Historically, stars like Randy Johnson, Tony Gwynn and Sammy Sosa never made to an IAL squad. Even Craig Biggio and Willie Wilson weren’t drafted as a rookies though they were eventually chosen as part of an expansion draft.
It should be noted that Arrieta was drafted in the Boys of Summer League, albeit after he was an established pitcher. His stats (based on 2015) are scary good for the Corktown Tamales. So far, he is 6-0 with a 0.74 ERA.
This isn’t really a problem that needs to be solved for the Illowa League. Incorporating stars after the fact would make the IAL even stronger than is now. Counter-balancing this by bringing in super-duds along with the super-studs would just be too complicated.
Yet, sometimes some of us in APBA leagues wonder how did we miss that guy?
In the cases of Arrieta, it would be impossible to know that a marginal talent would start taking incredible amounts of PED’s. That’s how you missed him.
So just ignore the fact that he had altered his delivery in Baltimore and Bosio corrected it?
I guess Bosio just got “lucky” with Hammels and Hendricks too?
Why is it “en vogue” with so many “fans” to tar Arrietta with the PED brush??? . . .
The guy has learned how to pitch . . . that happens frequently over the years in baseball . . . hitters learn how to hit, and pitchers learn how to hit . . .
Sometimes . . . not all do . . . there is nothing physically-different with Arrietta (as there was with Barry Bonds and others) to indicate PED use . . . he did not gain 70 pounds overnight, as one “for instance” . . .
I have a friend who is a Yankees fan, and he will NOT give David Ortiz any credit whatsoever . . . all my friend says about Ortiz is “Well, if he wasn’t on the stuff” . . . he has said the same thing for years, ad nauseum, as everyone rolls their eyes . . .
I will let him know you want to join his club, T. House . . .
and pitchers learn how to PITCH . . . please excuse the typo . . . thanks . . .
There aren’t many precedents for a guy like Arrieta to have crappy crappy numbers for like three years and then turn it around in their late 20’s. These recent seasons have not been just decent or very good seasons but among the greatest couple of pitching seasons and stretches of all time!
It could be the kale and Pilates or…. something else.The only player that I could come up with to have crappy seasons and then have spectacular seasons is Mike Scott of the Astros about 30 years ago.
The peds guys have ruined it for everyone and we may never know about the “Jakester” .