Jake Arrieta Named National League Pitcher Of The Month For April

Jake Arrieta received a Pitcher of the Week award after his no-hitter against the Reds. Now he's got another 2016 award, and we're only one month into the season:

Cubs Jake Arrieta named MLB pitcher of the month for April. 5-0 1.00ERA

— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) May 2, 2016

Jake made five starts, the Cubs won all of them, and he allowed four earned runs in 36 innings, three of them in one of the starts, one in another, and the other three were scoreless. He's allowed just 28 baserunners for a 0.778 WHIP and he leads the National League in ERA+ at 418.

There were some other candidates: Clayton Kershaw, with a 0.775 WHIP, a complete-game shutout and leading the league in strikeouts with 54 in 46 innings. Japanese import Kenta Maeda didn't allow a run for his first 14 major-league innings, but got hit pretty hard by the Marlins in his last start.

Jake's been consistently good in every outing so far. Congratulations, Jake, on what we hope is the first of several of these this year. His next start comes up tomorrow, Tuesday, against the Pirates in Pittsburgh. You know what happened the last time Jake started at PNC Park (the 2015 wild-card game).