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The Wednesday Takeaway
Something strange happened at Busch Stadium on Wednesday afternoon—Jake Arrieta gave up more than three runs in one of his starts. For nearly a calendar year—29 starts to be exact, going back to June 16, 2015—he never allowed more runs in a start than Three-Finger Brown could comfortably count. That's the longest streak in modern times, going back to at least 1988, with nobody else topping 24 consecutive starts of such quality. But streaks end.

It all started with a first-inning RBI single from Stephen Piscotty that put the Cardinals ahead in the early stages of the game. The Cubs responded by showering Arrieta with run support in the second inning. Addison Russell started the fun by hitting an RBI single to tie the game, and after Arrieta struck out for the second out of the inning, the Cardinals wouldn’t record the third until Tommy LaStella struck out six batters and five runs later.

After that explosion, you really couldn’t blame Arrieta for getting comfortable and hucking in strikes. After giving up a solo homer in the bottom half of the second to Randal Grichuk and a fourth-inning RBI double to Matt Adams in the fourth inning, the streak finally ended when Grichuk drove in Matt Adams for St. Louis’ fourth run of the day.

After Arrieta exited the game following the fifth inning, the Cubs once again had a positive reaction to the shock of Arrieta giving up runs, as Kris Bryant hit a ball that nearly landed with his friends in the bullpen.

That was a homer of the three-run variety, it made the game 9-4 and ended up being just enough for the Cubs to pick up the victory, by the score of 9-8. For all of the hand-wringing following their wobble in San Francisco and a series opening loss in St. Louis, the Cubs will still be leaving St. Louis with a 5.5 game lead in the NL Central and eight games clear of the Cardinals. And if Arrieta has lost one streak, he kept another one going: The Cubs haven't lost a regular-season game he started since July 25th, a run of 23 games. The Cubs and their ace are doing just fine.

Quick Hits
Would you like to see a baseball get hit nearly 500 feet? Nomar Mazara knows that you want to see this, so he obliged by hitting the longest home run of the season so far. You might be able to make out the ball landing, but there are rumors that's a trick of the eye, and that the ball is still soaring through the beautiful blue skies of Texas. Rumors are more attractive than truth, sometimes.

While the White Sox’s ace faltered on Tuesday, Cleveland’s ace lived up to his rep on Wednesday. Corey Kluber threw 7 1/3 innings against the White Sox and struck out seven while walking one batter and giving up one earned run.

Cleveland may have ended up winning the game by only a run, but they never really looked like they were in danger of losing this one—not when Kluber was throwing stuff like this.

The Padres are probably growing tired of extra-inning games. After wasting hours of their life in a 17-inning marathon loss to the Dodgers Sunday, they dropped a 10-inning series-sweeping finale against the Giants Wednesday.

As far as the Giants are concerned, that was their fifth consecutive victory, they’ve now won nine out of 10, and five games separate them from the Dodgers at the top of the NL West standings.

Here’s your daily update on Jackie Bradley Jr.’s hitting streak: Yup. He’s now five games away from breaking the franchise record, and one game away from tying Nomar Garciaparra and Tris Speaker for the second-longest streaks in Red Sox history. He’s reaching rarefied air in Boston, now.

Defensive Play of the Day

Here’s a screencap of where Taylor Motter was when he tried to throw Martin Prado out at first base.

Here’s another screencap of how that play ended.

Here’s video evidence of the entire great play by Motter.

What to Watch on Thursday
In his last start, Gerrit Cole managed to limit the Rockies to one run despite giving up 10 hits over seven innings. Surely, Cole will be trying to make sure that things go much more smoothly against Paul Goldschmidt and the rest of the Diamondbacks in a Thursday day game.

Meanwhile, Jose Fernandez will be entering Thursday’s early afternoon start on the back of three spectacular outings. Over four starts in May, Fernandez has a 1.80 ERA and a 2.39 FIP. With 13.1 strikeouts per nine, he's not only depriving Clayton Kershaw of a little extra bold ink, but he's just slightly behind Randy Johnson (13.4 in 1999) and Pedro Martinez (13.2 in 2001) for the highest strikeout rate ever by a starter.

Thank you for reading

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mattgold
5/26
Arietta gave up four runs twice in the span of a week last October. I know those were mere post-season games and therefore don't count.