Johnny Cueto: Is He for Real?

You may or may not be aware that one "Johnny Cueto" of the Cincinnati Reds is currently leading the National League in ERA with 2.29. Yes, he is currently ahead of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Clay Kershaw. Is this career year of Cuetos an outlier, or do his underlying statistics back up his improvement? Let's have a look.

To start off, his K/9 has actually decreased in all 4 seasons he has been in the majors; from a high of 8.17 in '08 to a low of 6.13 in '09. This is not normally a good sign for a pitcher, but in Cueto's case his ERA and FIP have also decreased in each season. Still a concern, but maybe Cueto is actually trying to pitch more to contact this year as some have suggested. His BB/9 rate has hovered close to 3 for the last three seasons, so that looks to be a non-factor in his improvement. Cueto's HR/FB and BABIP in 2011 are both at career lows (.5 and .245) so it appears that at least some of his improvement this year is a result of better luck. His LOB% is virtually exactly the same as it was last season though at just north of 76%.

When you break it down further, Cueto has added a curveball to his repertoire this year, which he is throwing over 9% of the time. And while according to FanGraphs this pitch is slightly below average, he has had a huge spike in his fastball effectiveness, going from a below average pitch last season to a pitch 16.6 runs better than average this season. Cueto's fastball velocity is down slightly this year, so it appears that the improvement may be due to his addition of the curve, allowing him to better keep the hitters guessing. His slider has also taken a big jump up to 6.8 runs better than average this year. This change of pitch selection has lead to a substantial increase in GB% from 41.7% in 2010 to 53.6% this year. His FB% has in turn dropped by almost 10%, resulting in a huge increase in GB/FB ratio of 1.07 last year to 1.77 this year.

So seemingly in every area besides K/9, Cueto's numbers have improved in 2011. This is backed up by this FIP progression (ERA in parentheses):
2008 - 4.9 (4.81)
2009 - 4.69 (4.41)
2010 - 3.97 (3.63)
2011 - 3.51 (2.29)

In every season in the bigs Cueto has outperformed his FIP, so maybe there is something to his pitching that the numbers can't quantify. His FIP this year is 20th in the National League, so he's maybe not to elite status yet, but he's certainly an above average major league pitcher. His numbers may regress in 2012, or even more in the last month of the season, but who knows, maybe he's one of those pitchers who can continually outperform the advanced metrics.