Jake Arrieta won the National League’s Cy Young Award last year, helping pitch the Chicago Cubs into the playoffs by posting a 1.77 earned run average and a 22-6 win-loss record with 236 strikeouts over 229 innings of work.

Arrieta, who came into the 2015 as one of baseball’s most underrated pitchers is still under Cubs team control until 2018, as he will head to arbitration 2 this year with the Cubs and Arrieta apart by about $5.5 million on his salary for 2016:

Breaking – Chicago Cubs and Jake Arrieta arbitration case set for Tuesday Feb 9th in Arizona.$ 5.5 million difference .

— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) February 4, 2016

Arrieta requested that the Cubs would pay him $13 million this year, and the Cubs front office offered him $7.5 million, so that’s why we will let Arbitrators decide this one.

We’ve heard rumblings about the Cubs wanting to extend Arrieta, and I am willing to bet that they do extend him before he hits the free agent market come 2018 to pair him with Jon Lester for more years to come in Chi-Town.

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