Johnny Cueto finding a new kind of success with Chicago White Sox

By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

It’s a familiar tale in this game we love: Star pitcher who used to overwhelm hitters with his nasty arsenal is forced to change his style of pitching to account for the natural decline in velocity and stuff that usually comes with, you know, getting older. 

Sometimes they figure it out and stick around for a while. Sometimes they don’t, and they’re out of the league before they turn 35. Sometimes they’re Justin Verlander, and they can still throw 99 mph at age 39. Baseball is weird like that.

Enter Johnny Cueto.

If you looked at only a few specific parts of Cueto’s statistical profile this season, you might reasonably assume that things aren’t going so well. Not only is the 36-year-old right-hander striking out fewer batters and allowing more contact than he has at any other point in his 15-year career, but he’s also garnering fewer whiffs and yielding more balls in play than almost any other starting pitcher in the league. 

In fact, among 94 MLB starters with at least 100 innings pitched this season, Cueto has allowed the highest rate of contact, at 85.2%. And his 15.3% strikeout rate ranks 91st. Yikes!

Yes, the same Johnny Cueto who led the NL in strikeouts in 2014, when he finished second in NL Cy Young voting to Super-Duper Peak, Literal MVP Clayton Kershaw, has struck out a total of 73 batters in 118.2 innings pitched this season.

In most cases, on its face, this would be enormous cause for concern. Surely, Cueto must be getting crushed. His time in the majors must be coming to an end soon. But it’s fine, really. There are only a handful of starting pitchers older than him, and we shouldn’t expect him to get outs forever. We can still celebrate his great career.

Well, actually, Johnny Cueto is not “most cases.”

You see, this isn’t an accident. Everything is actually going to plan. Following an outing against Texas earlier this month, in which he scattered 12 hits across eight innings while yielding only three runs, Cueto said he is purposefully pursuing outs via balls in play, rather than chasing punchouts.

“My plan has been to just try to make quick outs,” he said. “I haven’t been trying to strike out too many batters because I want to go deep into the games.”

Guess what? His plan is working. Despite letting the best hitters in the world put the ball in play over and over, Cueto keeps getting outs and keeping runs off the scoreboard. His 2.58 ERA ranks ninth among that same group of 94 starters, despite his allowing more contact than the other 93. He has also been able to achieve his stated goal of going deep into games: He’s averaging more innings per start than any other starter not named Sandy Alcantara. That’s ridiculous!

Cueto has been simply sensational this season and one of the most unexpected yet vital members of a White Sox team that has largely disappointed but still finds itself firmly in the mix for an AL wild card.

Now, should we be all that surprised that Cueto has put himself in the “figured it out” category of the Aging Pitcher Must Adapt conundrum? Probably not. He has, if rather quietly, been one of the best pitchers of his generation. He might not have a giant pile of awards and All-Star Games to show for it — though he has a World Series ring and the most recent World Series complete game — but his body of work is difficult to dispute.

Among active pitchers, Cueto ranks seventh in innings (2,140.1), 10th in strikeouts (1,783) and ninth in both bWAR (39.3) and fWAR (31.9), and his ERA (3.40) is 13th among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings pitched.

Cueto is also one of the greatest Dominican-born pitchers of all time, which is no small feat given the D.R.’s incredibly rich baseball history. Consider this: Of the 492 Dominican-born players who have pitched in a major-league game (second-most of any country besides the U.S.), Cueto ranks fifth in games started, sixth in innings pitched, fifth in wins and fourth in bWAR, behind only Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal — and, of course, Bartolo Colon.

That a pitcher who is arguably on the Mount Rushmore of Dominican pitchers has found a way to keep performing well at age 36 really shouldn’t be all that shocking.

Cueto enters his next start on a streak of 10 consecutive quality starts (that’s at least six innings pitched, with three or fewer earned runs allowed) dating to June 28. If he posts another QS on Friday against Arizona, it will tie the longest quality-start streak of his career, which occurred way back in 2011.

He’s also already tied with Justin Verlander for the fourth-longest such streak by a pitcher this season, behind Framber Valdez (21), Shane McClanahan (13) and Joe Musgrove (12). In short, Cueto has been as reliable as it gets.

Adding to the mystery and magic of Cueto’s success is the team he plays for. It’s one thing for a pitcher to scoff at chasing strikeouts if he has an elite defense behind him. The Cardinals built practically an entire pitching staff out of dudes who can confidently fill up the zone and allow buckets of balls in play because they have some of the game’s best defenders in Nolan Arenado, Tommy Edman and Paul Goldschmidt.

Cueto has no such army of Gold Glovers behind him. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Not only do the White Sox rank 27th in good, old-fashioned fielding percentage, but they also sit 25th in Statcast’s Outs Above Average, 25th in Defensive Runs Saved, 30th in Ultimate Zone Rating and 28th in team dWAR. Yet this pitch-to-contact approach has worked wonders for Cueto. At least his catchers are good at framing!

Now, it must be said that for as good as Cueto has been thus far, it’s possible this strategy will come back to bite him at some point down the regular-season stretch or in October, when the hitters are simply too good to allow them this much contact.

But even if the magic runs out at some point, Cueto has already been well worth the minor-league deal he signed with Chicago shortly before Opening Day. He was originally brought in as an insurance policy of sorts for the then-injured Lance Lynn. Instead, Cueto has been one of the most uniquely successful pitchers in the league, and the White Sox are lucky to have him.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn’t get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.