Everything's Jake

I think the most annoyed person in baseball on Thursday has to be Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs.  Consider the day he had at the plate -- he went 4-6, hit two home runs, hit a Grand Slam, scored four runs, and drove in six runs.  And it wasn't good enough.  After all that, he wasn't named Player of the Game.

That's because his teammate Jake Arrieta pitched a no-hitter.  His second in two seasons.

Some days, Bryant learned, it just doesn't pay to have a great day at the office.  Even his six RBIs weren't really needed, since the Cubs won 16-0.

Arrieta has been stunning for the past two years, starting with 2015 when he won the Cy Young Award.  This season, he's 4-0 with a 0.87 ERA.  Actually, that's been a bit of an increase -- in his last 16 starts, going back to last year, Arrieta has only given up five earned runs, and has an ERA of just over half a run a game, only 0.53.  And over that stretch, he's 15-0.  It's bizarre.  It's idiotic.

(By the way, one quibble with the sports coverage of this that I saw.  Reporters noted how there have only been four pitchers in the history of baseball who pitched a no-hitter the year after they won the Cy Young Award -- Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Clayton Kershaw and now Jake Arrieta.  And they all note that, at the moment, only Kershaw repeated as the Cy Young winner.  However, what all these reporters left out was a pesky fact:  that when both Koufax and Gibson was the Cy Young Award, there was only one winner each year for the two leagues.  Only later were the guidelines changed allowing for there to be a Cy Young Award-winner as best pitcher for each league, rather than one winner for all of baseball.)

​Anyway, here's the final out.