Can anyone stop Jake Arrieta? The Pittsburgh Pirates certainly couldn’t. Arrieta, the Chicago Cubs’ ace pitcher, continued his dominant season-ending stretch by blanking the Pirates 4-0 in the National League wild-card game on Wednesday. Arrieta pitched the entire game for the Cubs, giving up just four hits while striking out 11 batters. The performance comes off a breakout season for Arrieta. And he’s been especially dominant as of late. He ended the season with a 16–1 record and a 0.86 ERA in his last 20 starts. Baseball hasn’t seen a stretch quite like that in more than a century. It was a difficult end to a great season for the Pirates. They won 98 games, usually good for a division title, but finished two games shy of the St. Louis Cardinals. Now the Cubs, who won 97 games in the regular season, move on to St. Louis to face their biggest rival in the divisional series.
Read more about Jake Arrieta and the Cubs’ dominant wild-card win.