Royals Authority

I hesitated to use the term ‘star’ in the headline as everyone has a different set of rules as to what constitutes being a star. That’s not really the point of this article…or maybe it is.

Last night, Lorenzo Cain scored two of the Royals’ runs, one that tied the game in the bottom of the ninth. He also drove in another run, the winning run, in the bottom of the tenth. He had three hits against three different pitchers in his last three at-bats. It marked the fifteenth time this season that Cain has gotten three hits or more in a game.

For the year, Lorenzo ranks eighth overall among all position players in fWAR (6.2). The names ahead of him on the list? Bryce Harper, Josh Donaldson, Mike Trout, Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, Yoenis Cespedes and Manny Machado. Want to focus just on offense? Cain is 25th in wRC+ and 28th in wOBA. Don’t like the ‘new fangled stats’ because you cannot figure them on your TI30? Cain’s triple slash line is .307/.362/.483 with 32 doubles, 16 home runs and 28 stolen bases….all while playing stellar defense at a premium defensive position (he is 11th in defensive runs saved in the game, 9th in UZR, 14th in UZR/150, 2nd in Outs made Outside of Zone….there I go ago, new fangled).

Maybe you do not want to commit to the idea that Cain is a star, you probably need to come to grips with the fact that Lorenzo Cain is the Kansas City Royals’ best player.

Wins have been a struggle in September and last night, the Royals were coming off a total demolition. They left runners all over the bases, saw Yordano Ventura give up three runs in the fifth and seemed to be headed towards another frustrating loss. Then, however, the ‘good Royals’ started to show up. They pushed a run across in the seventh, showed excellent plate discipline in the ninth to tie the game and ended it in the 10th (good things happen when Gordon-Zobrist-Cain bat in a row). All the while, they got four innings of shutout relief from a bullpen that had looked a little too hittable this month. It was a very Royal win…and one it seemed that the team - and certainly the fanbase - desperately needed.

Momentum is a funny thing. If you bristle at the discussion of chemistry, then you certainly spit fire at talk of momentum. Baseball, in particular, has enough ebbs and flows attributed to momentum to make it seem irrelevant. Momentum in baseball, they like to say, is the next game’s starting pitcher. The Royals’ starter tonight is Johnny Cueto.

Cueto is coming off his first good start in six outings (after four good starts after acquisition - don’t let revisionist history get you on that one) which, at least publicly, has mostly been attributed to Salvador Perez simply setting a lower target. There are some who simply cannot take what the team says at face value and maybe they should not, but there is not a lot of sinister back story here.

Absolutely there is more to it than simply having Perez lower his glove a few inches. During his last start, Cueto was continually making motions after many pitches and between innings that clearly were related to him keeping his front shoulder closed. Listen, I think I know a few things about hitting. I admit I know jack about pitching, but I can tell when a guy is working on a trigger to get his mechanics in line. Likely that actual mechanical adjustment working in combination with a lower target yielded some positive results.

If I had to hack my way through Johnny’s fabulous mane and get inside his head, I would imagine he was thinking about his front shoulder between pitches and focusing on a lower target during the pitch. It’s not unlike having a whole bunch of crap in your head on the tee box in golf, but one solitary swing thought once you put the club in motion. The ‘lower target’ story line isn’t bull, it just is not the entire story.

Momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. The Royals need Cueto to stoke the momentum some more. They need Cueto to be a star on Thursday, just like Lorenzo Cain.

And you’re just plain wrong if you don’t know it.

Last night, Cueto was not good. After a remarkable display of pitching to get out of runners on first and third with no one out in the second, Johnny gave up three two-run homers on his way to a second bad outing in a row. Two bad starts in a row? You’re right, he’s a bum.

Let’s ignore, as Twitter strikingly did last night, the four starts before that. You know, a complete game shutout, a one run over eight innings performance before that, two runs over seven the start before that and three runs over six innings in his first Royal start. That first start, by the way, coming against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto. Not impressed by six innings and three runs? Do note that the Blue Jays AVERAGE 5.5 runs per game and are 17 games over .500 at home. Since acquiring Troy Tulowitzki, the Blue Jays have scored less than three runs in a game THREE times with only one of those occurring at home. Buy yeah, as one tweet went last night: Cueto’s a bum, bad in 3 of 5 starts. Weird, looks like six starts to me, with four of them being good, but math is hard.

Now, I fully understand Twitter is built for the instant, knee-jerk reaction and also that anyone talking baseball on Facebook is likely to be firmly over on the very casual side of baseball fandom. I also know the need to be a contrarian and so, like the Cueto trade, when something occurs that most people like, there is the group that wants to be different. They were out last night, too. The ‘I was worried about this with Cueto’ or ‘I didn’t see why everyone is so excited about this trade’ group. Yes, you are all so insightful.

Listen, if you want to debate that three months of Cueto is not enough to trade Finnegan, Lamb and Reed, I will acknowledge that opinion. I personally don’t think it was, but there is an argument to be made. You can also express concern that maybe Cueto would not stay healthy for half a season and have some standing. Johnny did, after all, miss portions of both the 2011 and 2013 seasons. If your reason is because you don’t think Johnny Cueto is not that good, then you are just not paying attention.

Since 2010, Johnny Cueto:

• ranks 16th among all pitchers in total fWAR
• ranks 4th in ERA
• despite missing parts of two seasons with injury, he is still in the top 25 in innings pitched
• ranks 6th in batting average against
• led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts in 2014
• pitched seven innings or more in 24 of his 2014 starts
• pitched seven innings or more in 16 of his 25 starts this season and six innings plus in six others

Now, Cueto’s FIP and SIERA numbers for 2010 through 2015 rank in the twenties for all starting pitchers. If you want to make an argument that Cueto is not an ‘ace’, whatever that really means, you have some standing. He isn’t Clayton Kershaw, but do be aware as you dance the ‘he’s not an ace’ line of the following:

• Kershaw has started eight post-season games in his career and allowed five runs or more three times and given up five runs in a start twice in 2015
• Zack Greinke, between winning the Cy Young in Kansas City and going to the Dodgers, posted an ERA of 3.48 or above in three straight seasons. He also has given up five runs or more in start twice this year
• Felix Hernandez has allowed five runs or more in four starts in 2015 and did so three time in 2014
• Dallas Keuchel? Two starts allowing five runs, three more allowing four.
• Chris Sale has allowed five runs or more five times this season

After the second inning escape last night, I tweeted ‘Johnny Cueto just gave us a lesson in what it means to be an ace’. Like I said, Twitter is made for the instant reaction and, if pressed and if you demand some adherence to the nebulous ace, one, two, three, five rating system of starting pitchers, I might lean to saying that Cueto is not really an ace. He is certainly a ‘number one’ and at the very high end of whatever scale you might use to designate who a ‘number one’ is. An ace? I don’t know, man, define ace. However you define it, be careful or you will end up describing no one. Every ace has his warts. Every ace and every number one has a bad start or two….and sometimes they come back to back.

Now, if you want to say Cueto is a ‘bum’ and ‘not that good’ and ‘has not been very impressive with the Royals’, then I do have to ask very sincerely, ‘What the hell color is the sky in your freakish, odd little world?’

During the 2014 season, Johnny Cueto threw 244 innings for the Reds. He struck out 242 batters and allowed just 6.2 hits per nine innings. His earned run average finished at 2.25….pitching half his games in the best hitters’ park outside of Colorado. Cueto’s ERA+ was 163, his FIP 3.30, his ERA- was 61. Pick a number, they are all good. With Johnny Cueto, they are almost always all good.

Don’t care about last year? Well, in 2015, Cueto has tossed 131 innings, stuck out 120, allowed 6.4 hits per nine innings, fashioned a 2.65 ERA and an ERA+ of 145. His FIP is 3.12 and Cueto has already provided 2.9 fWAR. I was told that Cueto had a bad May and he did, for him, allowing a 4.45 ERA. In other words, the worst month (by far) that Cueto had was better than what the Royals have gotten this year from Jeremy Guthrie, Yordano Ventura and Danny Duffy (before his last two starts).

Johnny Cueto is a Kansas City Royal.

You can name some major league pitchers who are better than Johnny Cueto, but the list is not very long.

Johnny Cueto is a Kansas City Royal and, by the way, Raul Mondesi, Kyle Zimmer, Sean Manaea and Miguel Almonte are still members of the Royals’ organization. The Royals did have to give up John Lamb, Brandon Finnegan and Cody Reed.

Sure, Finnegan was a great story last season and gave the Royals some decent innings in relief this year, but he was seventh reliever in a stacked bullpen and very little progress had been made in 2015 towards steering Finnegan back to a starter. I have little doubt Brandon Finnegan will have a long major league career, but many doubts that much of it will be spent being an effective starter. It is also doubtful that Finnegan was slated for many (if any) critical innings the final months of the season or in the post-season.

John Lamb is another great story and a guy you would have hated to trade away in say, 2011. As it is, even a great half season in AAA seemed to do little to advance Lamb’s status with the organization. Joe Blanton and Yohan Pino got starts while Lamb staying in Omaha. Once he profiled as a top of the rotation starter, now he looks to be a back of the rotation guy….and one who has yet to throw a major league pitch.

Quite honestly, the name that might come back to haunt you in this deal might be Reed. Hat tip to Clint Scoles (@clintscoles) who, after speculation that Sean Manaea’s medicals might be an issue on Saturday night offered that Reed was a pitcher that might be a suitable replacement. Reed, however, was just moved up to AA. I thought a lot of guys were going to be stars when they were in AA that never went anywhere.

These three guys all have potential, but they all have question marks and none of them will ever by Johnny Cueto. Of course, the argument goes, the Royals only get Cueto for a short period of time. There is this ‘I don’t like rentals’ sentiment that runs perilously close to being a ‘get off my lawn’ mindset. There is also the ‘hate to part with prospects’ mentality, drummed into many of us when all we had as Royals’ fans was the hope of prospects. I’m not buying either mindset. This was at worst a fair trade and quite possibly a clear win for the Royals.

In the end, this trade really comes down to this:

• Are the Royals more likely to win a World Series with Johnny Cueto on this team THIS year or more likely to win a title with Finnegan, Lamb and Reed paired with what is left in 2017?

Truthfully, the acquisition of ‘just a rental’ this year does not really effect the team’s ability to be a good team in 2016 given that Reed likely would not yet be ready, Lamb would - at best - be a rookie at the back of the rotation and Finnegan would almost certainly be in a similar role as this year.

While I was at the forefront of the ‘Royals need a bat more than an arm’ movement, I freaking love this trade. Some claim all this gets the Royals is just a handful of Cueto starts, but the math indicates that it gets them FOURTEEN regular season starts and, knock wood, at least two starts a piece in three post-season series. Maybe that is just a handful, but it is a damn valuable handful.

Couple Cueto with the just maybe possible resurgence of Danny Duffy and a hopeful start from Yordano Ventura and all of a sudden, the Kansas City Royals can at least dream about being four deep in starting pitching with the best and deepest bullpen in the game. Say what you want about teams acquiring aces not parlaying that acquisition into post-season success, but I like the idea that Jeremy Guthrie and Chris Young (as good as he has been, he falters in the second half with regularity and, by the way, do you want a flyball pitcher on the mound in a playoff game in Houston?) never being considered for a post-season start.

I like the idea that Dayton Moore and the Royals are buyers at the trade deadline. I like the idea that an organization and a general manager who have always relied on staying the course this time said that a seven game lead in the division is not enough. This was a move made to make the Kansas City Royals THE team to beat, not just one of the teams. And it was a bold move made without giving up any of the very best prospects in the system.

Johnny Cueto is a Kansas City Royal.

Today is a very good day.