Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy wasn’t walking out to the mound with a magic spell to fix Jake Arrieta’s early blunders against the Brewers on Sunday.
“He was just giving me a breather,” Arrieta said. “Wanted to slow things down.”
That breather worked wonders.
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The Cubs’ 6-0 loss to the Brewers was a pitchers’ duel until the ninth inning. It only became that kind of game after Arrieta, during a first inning threatening to spiral, willed it to be so.
“You have such trust that once he once he finds it … he's going to be just fine,” Cubs manager David Ross said after the game.
Arrieta allowed just one run and two hits through six innings, making it one of his best starts of the season.
No one would have predicted that outcome based on the first four batters he faced.
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Arrieta gave up a double and a single to begin the game. Just three pitches in, runners stood on first and third. Then, Arrieta walked the next two batters he faced. The second walk pushed the Brewers’ first run across the plate.
Hottovy visited Arrieta on the mound during five-hole hitter Keston Hiura’s at-bat. The bases were loaded with no outs.
“Sometimes you’ve got to bear down and make big pitches,” Arrieta said.
Arrieta retired the next 15 batters he faced. After pitching out of another jam in the sixth, he’d thrown 101 pitches, the most he has in a game this year.
He handed the game over to the bullpen with the score still frozen at 1-0. With the Cubs down by just one run, Brewers ace Brandon Woodruff came out after the sixth.
“Giving up one in the first and being able to squeeze my way out of it,” Arrieta said, “I understood that, that was about as much as I could give up If we wanted a chance to win the ballgame.”
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