After a shaky performance against the Cardinals in the NLDS, Cubs ace Jake Arrieta has an admission.
"I'm human from time to time," Arrieta told reporters Saturday.
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That probably comes as a surprise to any baseball team that faced Arrieta in his superhuman second half of the season. But after yielding five hits and four earned runs in 5 2/3 innings against the Cardinals in Game 3 of the NLDS, some are wondering if the heavy workload this season might have finally caught up with the right-hander.
Arrieta will get the start Sunday night for the Cubs in the NLCS against the Mets, who took a 1-0 lead in the series with their 4-2 win Saturday.
Arrieta has already thrown 243 2/3 innings this year, including 14 2/3 postseason innings. That's 87 innings more than he pitched in 2014, but he's not worried about the increased workload.
"The physical toll really hasn't bothered me at all, but I think that the mental side of it and all the energy you burn leading up to the game does have a little bit of an effect," Arrieta said. "But having a couple of these under my belt now, I'm pretty confident going in that I'll be able to handle that pretty well."
Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who started Jon Lester in Game 1 to give Arrieta, 29, an extra day of rest before his start, also isn't concerned.
"I'd probably be more concerned if he was 23 or 24, to be honest," Maddon told reporters Saturday. "The other part is if you look at his pitches per inning, they're pretty good. He's one of the lower, I think right around 15 pitches per innings pitched, and that's pretty darned good. So maybe he's thrown a lot of innings, but a lot of non-stressful innings, which I do think matters."
To put Arrieta's NLDS outing in perspective, it was the first time he allowed four earned runs in a start since mid-June.