The Walk Off: Dodgers finally end Jake Arrieta’s impressive streak
Welcome to The Walk Off, the nightly MLB recap from Big League Stew. Here we’ll look the top performers of the night, show you a must-see highlight and rundown the scoreboard. First, we start with a game you need to know about.
Give credit to Jake Arrieta. He did everything that you’d ask of your starting pitcher. He threw seven scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and leaving Tuesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers with the score knotted at zero.
Despite that, the Cubs lost to the Dodgers 5-0 and thus ended a mighty impressive streak that dated back to last summer. The Cubs hadn’t fallen in a game that Arrieta started since July 25, 2015, when they were no-hit by Cole Hamels and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Dodgers, after Arrieta left the game, went to work on the Cubs bullpen. They scored two runs off Clayton Richard in the eighth, starting with a tie-breaking single by Adrian Gonzalez. Then Corey Seager hit a three-run homer in the ninth that accounted for the rest of the 5-0 final.
Arrieta didn’t take a loss in the game, mind you. So that’s one streak that’s still intact. But the Cubs had won 23 straight games in which Arrieta had started, which is tied for the most all-time with Kris Medlen and the Atlanta Braves between 2010 and 2012.
It’s hard to blame Arrieta for any of this, since the Cubs mustered just one hit against the Dodgers’ combination of starter Scott Kazmir and relievers Joe Blanton and Adam Liberatore. Put in other terms: The Cubs combined for one hit in their last two losses with Arrieta on the mound. That’s not winning, no matter who’s on the mound.
Arrieta actually managed to lower his ERA on Tuesday night, from 1.72 to 1.56, keeping up this ridiculous pace since last summer:
Jake Arrieta last 24 starts:
20-0, 1.01 ERA, 169.1 IP, 88 Hits, 170 K, 4 HR, .150 Opp BA, 0.768 WHIP#Cubs— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) June 1, 2016
As baseball always reminds us: You can’t win ’em all. Even if you’re Jake Arrieta and the Cubs.
TOP PERFORMERS
• Mookie Betts: No one had a better night in baseball than Betts, the Boston Red Sox leadoff man who homered three times and made a fantastic diving catch in his team’s 6-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles. We covered Mookie’s one-man-army-like performance in greater detail here.
• Jake Peavy: It was Peavy’s birthday Tuesday, quite the fitting time for the righty to have his best outing of the season. Peavy, now 35, threw seven shutout innings, allowing just one hit as the Giants beat the Atlanta Braves 4-0. Peavy entered the night with a 7.26 ERA, a sure sign of a troublesome season, but finished at 6.34, which is a nice birthday present to himself.
• All the Rockies: When you play in Coors Field and you face the Cincinnati Reds’ pitching staff, a performance like the Colorado Rockies put forth Tuesday night isn’t all that surprising. But it’s still quite impressive. The Rockies hit seven homers en route to a 17-4 rout of the Reds. That include two homers apiece for Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado. The Rockies had 19 hits, including four for DJ LeMahieu and three each for Carlos Gonzalez, Gerado Parra and Troy Wolters.
MUST-SEE HIGHLIGHT
There’s nothing in baseball quite like the inside-the-park homer and Stephen Drew proved it again Tuesday night. Drew, who was only hitting .157 coming into the Washington Nationals’ game against the Philadelphia Phillies, made the most of his pinch-hit spot in the ninth. He hit a deep fly ball to right-center that Odubel Herrera couldn’t handle. The ball bounced around the outfield and Drew was off to the races, getting himself a Little League homer that was nothing if not exciting to watch. The Nats won the game 5-1.
REST OF THE SCOREBOARD
• Marlins 3, Pirates 1: Jose Fernandez outduels Gerrit Cole, as Marlins break open a 0-0 game with a three-run seventh.
• A’s 7, Twins 4: Danny Valencia homers, has two hits and three RBIs in the cleanup spot.
• Angels 11, Tigers 9: C.J. Cron delivers a walk-off, two-run homer to fend off the Tigers, who came back from a 9-2 deficit.
• White Sox 6, Mets 4: The Mets wanted to win this one so badly that they used Noah Syndergaard in relief, but the White Sox roar back to score three in the sixth and three in the eighth.
• Blue Jays 4, Yankees 1: RBI singles from Kevin Pillar and Darwin Barney break a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning.
• Rangers 7, Indians 3: Jurickson Profar hits in his fifth straight game since getting called up from Triple-A. This time it was a homer.
• Astros 8, D-backs 5: George Springer has three hits and four RBIs, including a three-run homer.
• Cardinals 10, Brewers 3: Matt Carpenter goes 4-for-5 with two RBIs to boost Cards.
More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:
The StewPod: A baseball podcast by Yahoo Sports
Subscribe via iTunes or via RSS feed
– – – – – – –
Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
