Ace the game

Not only did the Mets face the two Dodgers aces four times in the five-game National League Division Series, but they beat both Greinke and Kershaw once each during that stretch, moving on to this week’s NL Championship Series showdown with Arrieta and the Cubs.

“It basically sounds like normal playoff baseball, ” Mets hitting coach Kevin Long said. “Every guy you face, it seems like he’s high-caliber. We moved from Greinke to Kershaw to (Jon) Lester to Arrieta; it’s a tall task, but we met the last challenge and we’ll meet this one.”

Arrieta had one of the more memorable runs in recent memory, going 16-1 with a 0.86 ERA over a 20-start stretch between June 21 and the end of the regular season. That included eight innings of one-run ball against the Mets on July 2 at Wrigley Field, the same line he posted in a win at Citi Field on May 12.

The Mets’ lineup he’ll face in Game 2 is dramatically different — David Wright, Yoenis Cespedes, Travis d’Arnaud and Michael Conforto were not in the lineup for any of the seven games against the Cubs this season — so Arrieta knows the challenge he’ll face Sunday night will be difficult.

“It’s a different look, ” Arrieta said. “I still know these guys fairly well. We’ve got our work cut out for us. … I’ll take some notes (during Game 1) and kind of see what I can gather.”

Arrieta could wind up as this year’s NL Cy Young Award winner, an honor for which he, Greinke and Kershaw will almost certainly find themselves as the three finalists. But the 29-year-old has taken a long road to get to this point, enduring three-plus years of struggles in Baltimore — he was 20-25 with a 5.46 ERA in 69 games with the Orioles — before being traded to the Cubs in July 2013.

The righthander, whose natural pitching motion is to throw across his body, was told by the Orioles to take a straighter approach. The results were not positive, yet Baltimore continued to insist on it.

When he got to the Cubs, he was told to throw however he felt comfortable. He’s 36-13 with a 2.26 ERA in two and a half seasons in Chicago, including a 22-6 record and 1.77 ERA this season.

“He’s always had filthy stuff, but he throws more strikes, ” said Long, who was the Yankees’ hitting coach during Arrieta’s tenure in Baltimore. “The crossfire angle, the good velocity on his fastball, the cutter/slider is good pitch, his curveball is a quality pitch. He’s got nasty stuff and he fills up the zone. He’s a big challenge.”

Both Long and Cubs manager Joe Maddon — who managed the Rays while Arrieta pitched for the Orioles — believed that Arrieta always had the stuff to be a front-line starter, but the improvement of his fastball location was the key to him actually taking that step.

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