The Jake Arrieta Error is over for the San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres have been desperate to find pitching over the past few weeks. Due to numerous injuries and ineffectiveness, San Diego has brought in the likes of Jake Arrieta, Vince Velasquez, and Ross Detwiler to improve their staff. Those moves have gone about as well as could be expected.

On Tuesday, the Padres moved on from one of those players. With Javy Guerra back from the Injured List, San Diego designed Arrieta for assignment.

The Jake Arrieta Error is over for the San Diego Padres

It was fair to wonder if Arrieta had anything left when the Padres first brought him on board. He had been let go by the Cubs after posting a 6.88 ERA and a 1.761 WHiP over his 86.1 innings. For a Cubs team that was not going anywhere, there was no reason to keep him on the roster.

The Padres would have taken that production from Arrieta. He was somehow worse in San Diego than he was with the Cubs, allowing 16 runs, 15 earned, on 18 hits and five walks over his 12.1 innings. Somehow, even though the Padres were attempting to fight for a playoff spot, Arrieta made four starts, losing three of them.

Desperate times do call for desperate measures. After the Padres had their expected deal for Max Scherzer fall through at the last moment, and August trades being a thing of the past, there were few options available. They literally had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find anything with a pulse to fill out the pitching staff.

Even then, it was difficult to find anyone that thought Arrieta would be a viable option. While it would have made sense for a rebuilding team to take a chance on him with a minor league deal in the offseason, bringing him in to assist with a playoff push had disaster written all over it. That proved to be the case.

The Jake Arrieta Error is over. His four starts for the San Diego Padres in 2021 were four starts more than he should have had.