Cubs plan to approach Arrieta about long-term contract

There doesn't seem to be any rush, but the Chicago Cubs are interested in visiting the idea of a long-term contract for NL Cy Young candidate Jake Arrieta.

"He’s a Cub for next season. He’s a Cub for 2017," club president Theo Epstein told reporters Thursday. "I’m sure there will come a point in time where we’ll approach Jake and (agent Scott Boras) about seeing if we can extend that window. We’d be foolish not to want to do that."

With the Cubs' season coming to an end at the hands of the New York Mets on Wednesday, Epstein has already made it clear the team is in need of pitching, and surrounding a pitcher of Arrieta's caliber with more talented arms could make an already dangerous Cubs team that more potent.

Locking up Arrieta, who is eligible for arbitration in each of the next two years, to a long-term deal could potentially persuade some of the game's biggest free-agent arms to make Chicago their next home, so Epstein may want to make his move in the off-season.

"We’re not going to talk about it publicly," Epstein said. "But of course we’ll sit down and try and see what happens. More than anything, we’re just appreciative of the person he is, the year that he had and at the very least the next two seasons in a Cub uniform."

Arrieta earned a major-league leading 22 wins, and finished behind only Zack Greinke of the Los Angeles Dodgers in ERA with a 1.77 mark, in a regular season that included four complete games and a no-hitter.