What impresses baseball’s best pitcher most about Arrieta’s run

The best pitcher on the planet sat in the dugout at Wrigley Field looking through sheets of rain Tuesday afternoon and considered the question of dominance.

Scoreless streaks, hitless streaks, strikeout binges.

“All that stuff is trivial at the end of the day,” said the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw a few hours before Jake Arrieta took the mound against his team, following a 27-minute rain delay. “Like strikeouts, WHIP, ERA – all that stuff, doesn’t matter. It’s just whether you win the game or not and whether you’re the reason the team won the game. That’s how you look at it. You want to be the reason that your team wins the game on the day you pitch.”

That’s what the Cubs did – they won – 23 consecutive times Arrieta started for them, tying the longest streak in at least a century.

Until Tuesday.

Despite seven scoreless innings from Arrieta, the Dodgers beat the Cubs’ bullpen 5-0 behind a combined one-hitter from Scott Kazmir and the Dodger bullpen.

The Cubs’ previous loss in an Arrieta start required a no-hitter from Cole Hamels on July 25 – which means the Cubs have a combined one hit in their last two losses when he starts.

“It was a good streak, and we’ll get started on something else,” said Arrieta, who allowed the Dodgers just two hits in his first start against them since his no-hitter Aug. 30.

More than anything else Arrieta has done during a 31-start run during which he’s 25-1 with a 1.09 ERA (and two no-hitters), Kershaw seemed impressed by the streak that ended Tuesday despite Arrieta’s best start in weeks.

“That’s a testament to him. That’s something that has some merit, something that is impressive,” said Kershaw, the three-time Cy Young winner with an astounding 105-5 strikeout-to-walk ratio this season. “You know any time you’re facing a guy like that, not only does this team expect to win, but they do win, every single time.

“So it’s got to be a confident feeling for that team, for sure.”

It was a bounce-back game for Arrieta, whose only jam came in the seventh with three two-out walks before he struck out pinch-hitter Justin Turner on three pitches. He lasted just five innings in his previous start, allowing more than three runs for the first time in almost a year, in a 9-8 win at St. Louis.

“Good command … great movement,” manager Joe Maddon said of Tuesday. “He had a tremendous night.”

Arrieta’s personal 20-win streak of decisions remains intact. And as his streak of dominance has stretched from June of last year into June of this year, the target he has embraced with boundless confidence has only increased with each historical comparison to Bob Gibson or contemporary comparison to Kershaw.

Confidence? When asked about the strangeness of the Cubs losing on a night he was out-dueled, Arrieta said flatly, “Well, I don’t know if I got out-dueled. But Kazmir was good. …”

Former Dodgers ace Orel Hershiser, now part of the Dodgers broadcast crew, knows about targets, having finished his 1988 Cy Young season with a record 59 consecutive innings pitched, before the Dodgers went on to win the World Series that year.

Target?

“Maybe,” Hershiser said. “But it doesn’t matter. Because you could care less if you’re throwing a baseball what the hitter’s mentality is, other than his approach. I’m trying to get him out. I’m not thinking about `he really wants to get me.’

“But if I can see it in their body language, that might help me strategically.”

No pitcher has carried a bigger target in recent years than Kershaw.

“When you start having things like this that people talk about, it’s obviously cool, and you feel appreciated for what you’re doing,” Kershaw said. “But at the same time, the only way to handle it is just to completely focus everything on your next start and not worry about outside factors.

“You just have to do that the whole season or else you get caught up in everything else.”

If Kazmir’s best performance in 10 starts was any indication of the target that follows Arrieta through this run of dominance – if not the Cubs’ run at the front of the National League pack – then the process-minded Arrieta might keep flirting with history even as he endures the inevitable loss(es) and hiccups.

“Baseball probabilities tell you it’s probably going to end,” Hershiser said, recalling his scoreless streak. “But that doesn’t mean your execution has to end. I always thought about it in an execution way, not results.

“I always thought about it as I could always throw one more sinker away; I could throw one more curve ball in the dirt when I’m ahead; I could get the first hitter of every inning out, again. I could really eliminate my walks. That kind of stuff. Small bites.”

Arrieta gets four days to chew on Tuesday before trying to take his next bite Sunday against the Diamondbacks in an effort to start another team win streak in his starts.

“It’s important,” he said. “I only get to be out there once every five days, so putting out a quality effort, or an above-average effort is part of the game plan. It means a lot to get consistent wins for the team.”