Johnny Cueto is still the most interesting man in baseball

A few years ago, Johnny Cueto bought an ambulance, although calling this particular vehicle an ambulance is somewhat of a misnomer. It’s more like a real life Transformer. You open the back and 22 speakers — nine in each door and a stack of four in the middle — greet you. At the top of the ride, emerging from a hidden compartment, is a literal wall of sound: two drop-down flaps with six speakers each attached to a center panel with 20 more. For a pitcher, Cueto’s base percentage is extraordinary.

He bought this audiophile’s dream from Octavio Dotel, the veteran reliever, and immediately set out to improve it so that during meetings on El Malecón, the main drag of the Dominican baseball hotbed of San Pedro de Macorís, no one could top him in sound (or sound). even Robinson Cano, himself owner of a similar ambulance). Most of the time, Cueto places it by his pool, near the twin dolphin statues, and turns it on to provide whatever soundtrack he sees fit as he cooks beef, pork, chicken, goat, or whatever he generates. on his 1,500-acre ranch, whenever that day.

“One time we were in the pool and he parked the ambulance next to it,” she said. Reynaldo Lopez, his Chicago White Sox teammate and close friend. “He turned up the volume. And you could see the water in the pool moving to the beat of the music.”

Cueto denies it: “He’s a liar,” he laughed when asked about the story, but whatever the truth, Cueto is self-aware enough to understand that if anyone in baseball had a car with a With speakers so turbocharged it could make water dance, he would be the most likely suspect.

Cueto is now 36, a veteran of 15 major league seasons, winner of 135 games and a World Series crown and, until he retires, a constant threat to hold the title of Most Interesting Man in Baseball.

After spending the winter posting Instagram videos of his life, alternating between leisure and grueling workouts, he joined the Chicago White Sox last week after three weeks preparing for the major leagues at AAA. The layoff had delayed signing him, and eventually Cueto settled for a minor league contract, he said through interpreter Billy Russo, because he “knew he would be in the major leagues eventually.” Upon his return, Cueto headed to the mound, unleashed a dizzying series of shaky deliveries and promptly put out six scoreless innings in his 2022 debut. He celebrated the next day by spending 40 minutes running up and down stairs at Kauffman Stadium. .

On the eve of a matchup with the red-hot New York Yankees in the Bronx, Cueto feels empowered. He walks with a spring in his step, like one of the Paso Fino horses he rides every day at his house. That he has left San Pedro is a blessing. That, as a 5-foot-11 right-hander, he has risen to the major leagues is a gift. And that he blasted his way through over $150 million in career earnings is a wonder, and that he’s living proof that pitching comes in all shapes, sizes and forms is the latest stunt of his.

Cueto is a walking duality. He is short but plays big, bulky but moves gracefully. The launch slow but work fast. He got a doctorate in deception. “He sinks the ball, he cuts it, he makes hitters waste their time,” said the White Sox starter. Dallas Keuchel. “He’s everything I want to see in someone getting on the mound. He’s a pitcher“.

The heyday of pitcher, someone who would rather charm hitters than dominate them, is long gone, outclassed by a generation of executives who prioritize speed and spin-rate over pitching ability. But Cueto is proudly old school: Those runs between starts, considered old-fashioned by most, are critical to Cueto going far in games.

That means you also care more about RPM on a DJ’s turntable than on your slider. When Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association reached a collective bargaining agreement to end the lockout, teams struggling to fill their rotations were curious about Cueto’s form. Several asked if Cueto could provide data on the pitches he was throwing this winter to quantify what they could get if they sign him.

Perhaps they should have known better. Even after spending time with the San Francisco Giants, among the most progressive pitching organizations in baseball, Cueto said he doesn’t know Rapsodo or TrackMan, two pitch-tracking tools considered vital to modern analysis. Instead, he relies on the immeasurable kinds of things that helped him for nine straight seasons to have an ERA better than the FIP.

Nobody approaches the game like Cueto. On one pitch he’ll twist like Luis Tiant and on another he’ll pause mid-pitch to roll his shoulders. Even now, as he looks to deepen the White Sox’s battered rotation, he’ll try new things. On the seventh pitch of his first start this season, Cueto barely flexed his leg, planted his foot on the ground, lifted his leg and walked toward home plate. Never mind that he almost certainly violated Rule 8.01 governing legal pitches requiring only one pass per delivery. The referee did not call the balk and Salvador Perez he stared at Cueto’s 85 mph slider for a called strike.

“I can’t tell everyone who pitches in this room, ‘Hey, let’s add this component to what you do,'” White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz said. “Guys sometimes have a hard time doing just one. His ability to mix things up is an art, and he’s an artist at what he does on the mound.”

Katz first met Cueto in San Francisco, where he was a first-year assistant pitching coach and Cueto was in the fifth year of a six-year, $130 million contract. Cueto’s work caught his attention, his willingness to fight for a minuscule advantage. He couldn’t get over how agile Cueto was.

“If you look at his body, you’re like, ‘No way,'” said Lopez, who was introduced to Cueto by his trainer, a good friend of the pitcher. “But once you start training with him, you realize that yes, he is an athlete. I remember the first time we worked out together. I said, ‘Okay, let’s play catch.’ “What? No. Let’s run first.” We ran, we played catch… and then we ran again. One day I said to him, ‘Man, what are you doing? Do you want to kill me?’ “I couldn’t keep up with him. He said pitchers need to run. Because if you need to go out and make 50 pitches, how are you going to do it? He was right. I started to feel better every time. That’s the kind of thing he does. He runs a lot to prepare his legs for what he is about to do.

“Work hard and eat a lot.”

Any rational person loves a good feast, though Cueto’s desire to publicly document his charmed life, one that at times seems more like a beer commercial, drives him apart. Some of the earliest photos of Cueto’s work show him lying on his bed, perpetually calm. To honor a deceased horse, he posted a snapshot of his lifeless body. In a more recent image, Cueto cut a model’s figure on a baseball diamond, a modern response to George Costanza posing on a couch, prompting his old Cincinnati Reds teammate Joey Votto commented, “Wow, you look sexy on the grass.”

This window into Cueto’s life, as curated as it may be, is worth appreciating. Cincinnati signed him in 2004 for $35,000. His career has lasted longer than even the most seasoned optimist could have imagined. He lives an interesting life because he earned it.

So, whether it’s pitching at Yankee Stadium or informing the world that ambulances aren’t always for emergencies, Cueto gladly pulls back the curtain and embraces the absurdity he embodies.

“Everything I post, I post from my heart,” he said. “I don’t post everything I do. But I like to show people what I do, how hard I work. It’s just a way for me to connect, especially with young fans, and then you can see, oh man, he works hard.

“I’m a happy person. I like to enjoy what I do, and I like that the people around me enjoy just being around me and being happy too. I like to compete. I like to have fun.”

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Johnny Cueto is still the most interesting man in baseball