12:20pm: The Padres and Arrieta have agreed to a deal, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (Twitter link). He’s expected to start for them on Wednesday.
11:15am: The Padres are “close” to signing right-hander Jake Arrieta, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter link). USA Today’s Bob Nightengale first indicated that the Padres were among the contenders to have reached out to Arrieta, who was released by the Cubs last week. Arrieta is repped by the Boras Corporation.
San Diego suddenly finds itself desperate for innings — a scenario few would’ve anticipated after an offseason in which the Friars acquired Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove to strengthen a rotation that already looked to have a fair bit of depth. However, Darvish was placed on the injured list yesterday owing to back issues, and the Padres are also currently without Chris Paddack (oblique strain), Dinelson Lamet (forearm inflammation, hip surgery) and Adrian Morejon (Tommy John surgery). Touted prospect MacKenzie Gore hasn’t pitched in a game since June 13, as he was sent back to the team’s Spring Training complex to work on mechanical issues not long after.
Arrieta will give the Padres a veteran option to soak up some innings, but the extent of his struggles with the Cubs underscore the dire nature of the need for arms in San Diego at the moment. While Arrieta got out to a nice start after signing a one-year, $6.5MM deal to return to the Cubs, his production cratered after a handful of solid outings to begin the season.
Arrieta pitched to a 2.57 ERA through his first five starts but has since been shellacked for 58 runs in 58 1/3 innings. He completed six innings just one time in those 15 outings and completed five frames in just six of them. And while a few poor outings can always skew a few months’ worth of numbers, that isn’t necessarily the case here; Arrieta allowed at least four runs in 10 of those 15 starts. This year’s 90.8 mph average fastball is the lowest of his career and represents a two mile-per-hour drop from last year’s levels.
Of course, Arrieta was once one of the game’s best arms. He followed up a strong first half in 2015 with a historically dominant second half, cruising to a National League Cy Young Award and a sixth-place finish in NL MVP voting. He went on to throw a shutout in his postseason debut in 2015. That was followed by All-Star campaign in 2016, which featured 197 1/3 innings of 3.10 ERA ball, and Arrieta posted a 3.63 ERA in 22 1/3 postseason frames as the Cubs marched to a World Series victory. Broadly speaking, he was one of the primary drivers behind the Cubs’ transformation into a perennial contender during his initial run there.
That all feels like a distant memory after three lackluster years in Philadelphia, an elbow surgery, and this year’s unsuccessful Wrigley reunion. The Padres will hope a change of scenery can lead to some late-season lightning in a bottle, but the mounting number of rotation injuries has left their grip on the second NL Wild Card spot feeling more tenuous than ever. What was a six-game lead over the Reds as recently as July 27 has been whittled away to a 2.5-game lead over their closest competitors in Cincinnati.
