Picking the Most Valuable Royal from a roster as deep as the Mariana Trench is a fool’s exercise, but humor us here.
Exhibit A. The Clincher, Game 5 of the 2015 American League Division Series: eight innings pitched, two hits, two runs, eight strikeouts.
Exhibit B. The Tone-Setter, Game 2 of 2015 World Series: nine innings, two hits, one run, four Ks, the first complete game thrown by an American League starting pitcher in the Fall Classic since Jack Morris back in 1991.
Exhibit C. The Company. Only three pitchers have two postseason starts with eight or more innings and two or fewer hits under their respective belts: the first two? Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan.
The third? Johnny Cueto.
This, now, this is why they got him. This moment, this stage, these stakes. The Most Important Player – maybe not the most valuable, but arguably the most important – for the Royals in the 2015 World Series was cruising Wednesday night, top down, dreadlocks blowing in a misty wind, driving Kansas City to a 7-1 victory that put the American League Champions up 2-0 in the best-of-seven series.
“Johnny thrives in this environment,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of Cueto, who went into Wednesday night with a 7.88 ERA this postseason, down, then up, then down, then up again. “He loves the fans, he loves to feed off their energy. I felt very strong that he was going to put up a great performance.”
More to the point: when he’s great, so are they. Which circles back to the Most-Valuable argument, the whole Most-Important discussion. Besides the stat line, consider the context going into Wednesday. The Mets were sending out their hottest postseason arm, young Jacob deGrom, the right-hander with the cocker spaniel locks and the 1.80 postseason ERA. The Royals had burned through their bullpen late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning during a 14-inning Game 1 marathon, the staff physically tired and, compounded by the death of Edinson Volquez’s father, mentally fried.
“For him to come out here and throw a complete game,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said, almost reverently. “That’s what an ace does. When you realize that your bullpen is pretty much spent and they’re pretty much burned out, he pretty much went out there and put the team on his back and made [closer] Wade [Davis] and [set-up man Kelvin] Herrera just have a a day off and gave them two full days [of rest] heading into New York.”
They made him throw 122 pitches on the evening – 70 for strikes – and yet the Mets never really, other than the fourth inning, made Cueto work much for it. With two outs in the aforementioned frame, New York’s Lucas Duda had jammed a bleeder the other way into short left field, plating Daniel Murphy with the first run of the game. But after the Royals had wrenched momentum back with a four-run fifth, Cueto kicked it into another gear, recording 1-2-3 innings in the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth.
“You saw it even in the (ninth) inning, still changing speeds, throwing strikes, using his change up, pitching to both sides of the plate,” Mets manager Terry Collins said of Cueto. “Very effective pitching (with) all the wind up, all the different deliveries, it throws your timing off. And he’s pitched great here. We’ve just got to worry about making some adjustments in our lineup to start getting some hits. He’s good. That’s why they went and got him.”
They got him to take the wheel, to feed off the juice of the crowd, and vice versa. With two outs in the top of the eighth, hosts up 4-1, Kauffman Stadium erupted as one:
CUE-TO!
CUE-TO!
CUE-TO!
CUE-TO!
“I feel great when I hear our fans,” Cueto would say later through translator and hitting coach Pedro Grifol, “just supporting me and backing me in these type of situations.”
Staked to a 7-1 lead in the top of the ninth, Yost elected to let him finish what he’d started; Cueto responded by gleefully skipping out of the dugout, hopping across the foul line en route to the mound, a kid in baseball’s biggest candy store.
And with one out in the ninth, the locals were at it again:
JOHN-NY CUE-TO!
CLAP, CLAP, CLAPCLAPCLAP
JOHN-NY CUE-TO!
CLAP, CLAP, CLAPCLAPCLAP
“I felt good, I felt relaxed,” Cueto said. “And I know I had a 7-1 lead and I had to just attack the hitters.”
His teammates, meanwhile, had taken up the attack, piranha nibble after piranha nibble, in the bottom of the fifth. It was very Royals frame: walk, single, single, a grounder to first, a lineout to center, single, single, single, a grounder to third. By the time it was done, the hosts were up 4-1, and the 27-year-old deGrom looked shell-shocked.
“We win because we ride our starting pitching,” Collins said. “When they struggle, we’re going to struggle.”
With runners in scoring position, batters against deGrom in the postseason before Wednesday were 2 for 21. Pitches that were missed by the Dodgers and Cubs were earlier in the month got fouled off or found contact. Hard contact, usually.
“If you’re going to continue to pound the strike zone, they’re going to put it in play,” Collins said, neatly summing up the Royals’ basic offensive philosophy. “And that’s what they did. You make bad pitches against a team that can hit, you’re going to get hurt.”
A former catcher, Yost relishes the hurt, relishes the tiny chess matches inherent in the game, especially those magnified in the postseason. The Royals skipper trusts the emotional Dominican righty, a midseason acquisition from Cincinnati, but he trusts him more when he’s got a full house on his side.
Since 2013, Cueto boasts a 2.18 ERA over his last 256 home innings, third best in the majors among qualified pitchers over that span. And while the Royals feast on fastballs, a Mets speciality – their .284 average against pitches 96mph or faster heading into the World Series led the majors – the Mets were hitting just .219, collectively, against the same kind of heat.
“We’ve got to pick it up offensively,” Collins said. “We’ve got to do a better job of using the field to hit. And we’ve done it. We’ve certainly done it. We’ve got to do it again.”
And quickly. Since 1903, only 13 teams in Major League history have rallied from an 0-2 deficit to win a seven-game series. For Collins, deGrom and the Mets, hair today could be gone tomorrow.
