My original intent for this column was to lend context to Jake Arrieta’s recent stretch of dominant performances.

If you’ve watched MLB Network or ESPN the past couple days, you’ve probably seen the number that jumps off the television screen. In his past 26 regular-season starts, dating back to his June 21 shutout of the Twins last summer, the Cubs’ ace right-hander has a 0.85 ERA.

Zero Point Eight Five.

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It’s really stunning. True tell-your-grandkids brilliance. Bob Gibson stuff.

My first thought was that Arrieta has arrived at “Peak Bonds” territory, or that he’s at least established a well-equipped base camp and started his climb. When I say “Peak Bonds,” of course, I’m referring to Barry Bonds’ incredible run from 2001-04, when he won four consecutive NL MVP awards, produced an insane .349/.559/.809 slash line, a 1.389 OPS, nearly as many home runs (209) as strikeouts (239) and a mind-boggling 755 walks. (And, let’s be clear, the connection to Peak Bonds has nothing at all to do with recent completely unfounded PED rumblings connected to Arrieta. None. It was about lending context to brilliance by finding other examples of brilliance.)

But here’s the thing I realized, as I started to dig a bit deeper into Arrieta’s performance over those 26 consecutive regular-season starts since June 21, 2015: I’m not even sure he’s been the best pitcher in baseball during that stretch.

Yeah, I know how crazy that sounds.

I think Clayton Kershaw has been just a tiny bit better, and I think you might agree by the time we’re done here. If nothing else, you’ll realize it’s a lot closer than you previously thought.

I’ll stop here to say this isn’t my first deep dive into some type of recent comparison between Arrieta and Kershaw. I had a 2015 NL Cy Young vote, so obviously I was dealing with a slightly different time frame. I voted Zack Greinke first (primarily because of his wire-to-wire dominance), followed by Arrieta and Kershaw, both of whom had uneven starts to 2015 but closed on amazing lengthy runs to end the season. For today’s comparison, though, by starting on June 21, 2015, we’ve completely eliminated those rocky starts, and both Arrieta and Kershaw been awesome in 2016.

We’ll start this exercise with the basic numbers (again, from June 21, 2015 until now). These first numbers, admittedly, favor Chicago’s ace.

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Arrieta: 26 starts, 0.85 ERA, 190 innings, 0.71 WHIP, 22-1 record

Kershaw: 25 starts, 1.50 ERA, 185 2/3 innings, 0.75 WHIP, 14-4 record

From these numbers, it feels like a pretty cut-and-dry case, right? Kershaw’s 1.50 ERA is really impressive, but it’s nearly twice what Arrieta has produced. And his 0.75 WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched, btw) is kind of amazing, but not quite as amazing as Arrieta’s 0.71 WHIP.

I hate including Win-Loss record, because that’s quite possibly the most flawed statistic in the history of sports statistics. But it’s become part of the Arrieta narrative, so I can’t ignore it for the context of this conversation. That 22-1 looks pretty amazing. Makes for a shiny graphic number.

We can’t stop there, though. Let’s move to the first number that really caught my eye …

Arrieta: 2.20 FIP

Kershaw: 1.76 FIP

Well now.

FIP, of course, stands for Fielding Independent Pitching. This advanced metric was created as an attempt to measure what a pitcher’s ERA would be based on only the things a pitcher can control, independent of the defense behind him. Kershaw’s FIP is essentially the same as his ERA. Arrieta’s FIP is much higher than his ERA. Heck, Arrieta isn’t even second in the majors in FIP during that stretch; Stephen Strasburg has a 2.10 FIP in 19 starts since June 21, 2015.

But why is the disparity so great? Here’s a big reason …

Arrieta: 8.72 K/9, 4.72 K/BB

Kershaw: 11.29 K/9, 10.59 K/BB

Yikes. Kershaw has clearly been better at preventing opposing hitters from putting the ball in play. Much, much better, actually. If you’re going to try and prevent opposing teams from scoring, preventing opposing hitters from even making contact is a good place to start. In his 190 innings, Arrieta has struck out 184 batters. In his 185 2/3 innings, Kershaw has struck out 233.

And it’s not just that Kershaw is striking out batters at an amazing rate, it’s that he’s not giving away many free trips to first base, either. Kershaw’s walked just 22 in those 185 2/3 innings. Arrieta’s given 39 free passes in his 190 innings. Look at this: Among pitchers with at least 100 innings since June 21, 2015, Kershaw’s strikeout-to-walk ratio of 10.59-to-1 is, by far, the best in baseball (Strasburg is second, at 7.48-to-1). Arrieta’s 4.72-to-1, on the other hand, is just 18th.

FIP loves pitchers who don’t let opposing batters put the ball in play, and FIP loves pitchers who don’t give opposing batters free trips to first base. So FIP loves Clayton Kershaw.

But, I thought, what about the hits allowed?

Arrieta: 190 innings, 96 hits, 4.55 H/9, .149 OppAVG, .201 OppBABIP

Kershaw: 185 2/3 innings, 118 hits, 5.72 H/9, .179 OppAVG, .261 OppBABIP

Arrieta has been otherworldly stingy in allowing base hits in this stretch. It’s really something. Only 96 hits in 190 innings. Just, wow.

That .201 opponents batting average on balls in play is otherworldly, too, though. The FanGraphs leaderboards on that stat go back to 2002; since then, the lowest full-season opponents BABIP is .216, by Marco Estrada last year (Arrieta’s full-season mark was .247 for 2015, btw). So, yeah, that .201 is crazy low.

And so much of that, of course, has been Arrieta’s ability to limit hard contact — you try squaring up his nasty stuff — but there’s also a bit of good/bad fortune (depending on your perspective) mixed into the inherent nature of BABIP, for both hitters and pitchers. The difference between a line drive being a hit and an out can be a matter of inches. Same thing with weak grounders and off-the-end-of-the-bat bloopers.

FanGraphs tracks “hard-hit” balls. Here are Arrieta’s month-by-month percentages of hard-hit balls, from July 2015 through May 2016 (regular-season only, of course): 21.7, 21.2, 18.2, 20.7 and 17.7. And here are the same percentages for Kershaw: 16.7, 29.4, 20.4, 33.3 and 13.3. Arrieta has been more consistent in limiting hard contact. Kershaw’s best months have been a little better than Arrieta’s best months, in terms of limiting that hard contact.

Kershaw’s .261 opponents BABIP is still way below the average for NL pitchers in this span (it’s .300), but it’s also a far cry from Arrieta’s .201. In this stretch, Arrieta has given up 30 extra-base hits (24 doubles, four homers, two triples) and Kershaw has allowed 28 extra-base hits (18 doubles, nine homers, one triple). Pretty even, right? When you look at the fact that the entire difference in hits allowed by Arrieta and Kershaw comes down to a singles (90 for Kershaw, 66 for Arrieta) and look at the 60-point difference in opponents’ BABIP, it at least allows for the possibility that luck/fortune has favored Arrieta in this still-relatively-small sample size.

So what’s the point?

My point isn’t to take anything away from Arrieta. He’s been amazing, the type of stop-what-you’re-doing-and-watch true ace who makes baseball great.

I’m just saying there’s room for Kershaw on that same pedestal (and when Kershaw’s pitching at home, with Vin Scully on the call, well, baseball watching doesn’t get any better than that). I think we have gotten used to what Kershaw has done, so this splitting hairs with his past brilliance — he’s won three Cy Young awards (he’s also finished second once and third once) and he was the first pitcher to win the NL MVP since Bob Gibson in 1968 — sometimes lessens the impact of his current brilliance, if that makes sense.

That’s a shame. We should always appreciate greatness.

So which guy has been better? There’s no real perfect answer. It depends on what you value in a pitcher. From a things-pitchers-can-control perspective, Kershaw has been better than Arrieta at preventing runners from even making contact with the baseball, which helps accounts for his advantage in FIP. From a bottom-line perspective, Arrieta has allowed fewer earned runs (18) than Kershaw (31) in this stretch, which accounts for the difference in ERA.

I tend to lean Kershaw, which I admit I did not expect when I started researching this column. Heck, I didn’t even expect to have this internal debate.

But it's pretty clear Arrieta hasn’t been the only pitcher posting unbelievably brilliant numbers since June 21, 2015.