Jake Arrieta has been destroying hitters everywhere over the past year or so, and naturally, as tends to happen when a once-mediocre ballplayer turns into a world-beater, whispers about PED use began to simmer.
Arrieta hit back at those accusations on Tuesday, which led to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless debating his comments on Wednesday’s edition of First Take.
Smith called into question Arrieta’s endurance, noting how he abruptly began pitching a lot of innings and didn’t seem to have any issue with the added workload.
“I’m just looking at it, and I’m saying to myself, alright,” Smith said. “I’m not going to accuse you of using performance enhancing supplements, drugs, whatever you want to call it. But I will say that you shouldn’t just be laughing at those who are looking at you and saying ‘Excuse me, what the hell is going on here?’ Because it’s not like they haven’t seen performance enhancing drug usage before.”
Arrieta, who is known to be pretty forthcoming on Twitter, caught wind of Smith’s comments and promptly let him have it.
Laughing is exactly what I will do. You continue to do your thing though. No one will undercut my hard work. @stephenasmith
— Jake Arrieta (@JArrieta34) April 27, 2016
Smith seemed to lay off pretty much immediately.
I hear ya @JArrieta34. It's your life/career. You've earned the right to do what you want. The best to you.
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) April 27, 2016
It’s easy to forget that Arrieta was one a very highly-rated prospect who struggled in Baltimore for a number of reasons. He himself has pointed out some of the observable changes he’s made, including mechanically and in pitch selection. He correctly pointed out that his velocity has never changed throughout his career. Suspicions will continue as long as Arrieta keeps pitching games like this one, and he seems perfectly happy to laugh it off.
And hey, as long as people keep flinging wild accusations at him, maybe we’ll keep getting more responses like this one from him on Twitter. Fine by me.
