Could reunion bells soon be ringing in the city of Baltimore for Jake Arrieta?
FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman reported Thursday that some within the Orioles organization still “love” the All-Star righty. Heyman does add however that “there’s almost no way” they would pay the money needed to get him back.
The 31-year-old Arrieta, a free agent this offseason, was drafted by the Orioles in 2007 and spent the first three years of his big-league career with them. But it wasn’t until after he was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 2013 that he became one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, winning the NL Cy Young Award in 2015 and helping the Cubs win the World Series the year after that.
Arrieta regressed during the 2017 campaign, but he still seems confident that he will be able to score a big payday. The Orioles are notoriously tightfisted when it comes to long-term deals and likely won’t even be forking over the money required to retain this much younger franchise cornerstone. Thus, it sounds like an Arrieta homecoming may be a tad overly idealistic.
