Miguel Montero may well have been speaking for all Cubs fans when he said he was excited after Jake Arrieta's outing.
The reigning National League Cy Young winner is in the race for the prestigious award again this season, but he's gone through some ups and downs, battling inconsistency all year.
Yet in Friday's 5-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in front of 40,791 fans at Wrigley Field, Arrieta flashed his potential, again showing what it looks like when he has everything clicking.
Arrieta struck out the side in the first inning, setting the tone for a 10-strikeout performance over seven shutout innings, allowing only five singles and a walk.
"It looked really familiar, the way they were taking some pitches, the strikeout performance," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.
Familar to last season, when Arrieta went on a superhuman run that topped anything anybody's ever seen before?
"He's not 100 percent there yet," Maddon said, "but definitely moving in the correct direction. That's a wonderful moment to build off of for him.
"I'm absolutely certain that his confidence has to be peaked a little bit right there. That was more reminscient of what we saw last year."
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All summer long, everybody's been asking how Arrieta gets back to his dominant level.
And all summer long, Maddon has maintained Arrieta is getting there, while the veteran starter has struggled to find his command and feel.
Will we look back at Friday as the turning point?
"We've been hyper-critical of him all year based on what he had done last year," Maddon said. "But to his credit, I think he's handled that really well, the criticism. He can just easily say, 'Look at my numbers, what's wrong with that?'
"But he knows theres another level of his pitching ability, so give the guy credit for continually attempting to work it out and make it even better and really holding himself to that higher standard."
Arrieta believed he had something of an revelation during Friday's outing, realizing he can dial it back and still get plenty of outs without going maximum effort all the time.
"I think the big thing for me is controlling my effort," Arrieta said. "When I'm able to do that, my stuff speaks for itself. Sometimes the competitiveness, the stubbornness gets in the way, but once I push that aside, stuff works pretty well."
Montero actually believes it's not the "effort" that is the key with Arrieta.
"I don't think he knew how to explain that," Montero said. "I don't believe he backed down or anything. I just believe he was letting the ball go rather than be pinpiont, rather than be nibbling, rather than make perfect pitches.
"You can see his fastball velocity picked up today than the past. And that was my main goal. I told him, 'I don't want you to be throwing 91 on the edges. I want you to be throwing 94, 95. Let it go.' Because I've had experience before with pitchers where they've been hit a few times and they just try to start nibbling.
"You just gotta stay strong, stay positive, make pitches. We create bad habits, slowing your arm down just to be perfect. And then when you make a mistake, you get hit. My point is, if you're gonna make a mistake, just make a mistake letting it all out.
"And he did that today. There were pitches that he threw middle-middle that they couldn't do anything with because he was pitching with conviction behind it and he was letting the ball go. And when he does that, he executes a lot more pitches."
