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.

Former All-Stars

I was intrigued when I discovered that this year's Boston Red Sox have 17 different former or current all-stars playing for them, the most of any team in baseball. This seemed like a high percentage of the team to me, so I started looking back at previous seasons totals. This got me wondering if the number of all-stars that are on any individual team has any correlation with that team's performance in a given season. To do this, I decided to go back to 2006 and find every team that had 15 or more current or former all-stars on it, and look at their season performance, and specifically whether or not they made they playoffs.  There were 28 such teams, for an average of 4.7 teams/season.

Year	Tm	All-Stars	Wins	Losses	Playoffs
2011	BOS	17	84	55	yes*
2011	NYY	16	85	53	yes*
2011	ATL	15	82	57	yes*
2010	BOS	18	89	73
2010	LAD	17	80	82
2010	NYY	17	95	67	yes
2010	ATL	16	91	71	yes
2010	PHI	15	97	65	yes
2009	BOS	21	95	67	yes
2009	LAD	19	95	67	yes
2009	CHW	15	79	83
2009	TEX	15	87	75
2008	BOS	18	95	67	yes
2008	LAD	18	84	78	yes
2008	NYY	17	89	73
2008	CHW	15	89	74	yes
2008	DET	15	74	88
2007	LAD	20	82	80
2007	BOS	18	96	66	yes
2007	NYM	17	88	74
2007	NYY	15	84	68	yes
2006	LAD	23	89	73	yes
2006	BOS	18	86	76
2006	PHI	17	85	77
2006	CHW	16	90	72
2006	NYM	15	97	65	yes
2006	NYY	15	97	65	yes
2006	SEA	15	78	84

Now obviously there are a lot of repeat teams in this list, as teams that don't have a lot of turnover are going to have largely the same number of all-stars in a string of consecutive years. The most prevalent team on the list is the Red Sox, who have at least 15 all-stars in all 6 seasons that I looked at. This is followed by both the Yankees and the Dodgers, who both have at least 15 in 5 of the 6 seasons.

The average win total for these teams (not including the 2011 teams) is 88.2 wins, well above league average, and within a few of a usual playoff spot. Of these 28 teams, 16 made the playoffs (I'm including the 2011 Red Sox, Yankees, and Braves as playoff teams) a 57% success rate. A pretty good result in a sport where only 26.7% of the teams make the playoffs in every season. This result shows that there is in fact a likely correlation between having a lot of all-stars on your team and making the playoffs. Most of the teams on this list are also teams with large payrolls, which allows them to stock up on veteran players, who have been around a few years and have a better chance to become an all-star than a rookie.

The three teams with the highest number of all-stars in a season are the 2007 Dodgers with 20, the 2009 Red Sox with 21, and the 2006 Dodgers with 23. The 2007 Dodgers went 82-80 and missed the playoffs, but both the 09 Red Sox and 06 Dodgers did make the playoffs, but failed to advance to the World Series.

Although a high percentage of these teams did make the playoffs, it should be noted that only one, the 2007 Red Sox with 18 all-stars, actually ended up winning the World Series.

Vernon Wells and Alex Rios

Ahh, the fall of 2006. Things were looking good for the Blue Jays. They were coming off an 87-75 season, and had finally managed to finish ahead of Boston in the AL East. Vernon Wells was a key part of this result, having put together the best season of his career with a .303/.357/.542 line with 32 homeruns and 106 RBI. This was good for 6.7 WAR (B-R) (5.8 on FG), which was tied for 4th highest in the AL. The Blue Jays decided they had to lock him up long term and signed him to a 7 year deal worth 126 million, making him one of the highest paid players in baseball. At the time, Alex Rios was also coming off his best season in the majors, producing 3.4 WAR (3.6 on FG) in his third full-time season. Together it looked like the Blue Jays had their outfield all set up for the long term.

In 2007, however, things started to falter. Vernon Wells slumped through the year with a .245/.304/.402, producing only 1.9 WAR. Luckily for the Blue Jays though, Alex Rios improved upon the previous season's play and put up 4.5 WAR. This performance was good enough for the Blue Jays to extend him in April of 08 to a 7 year deal of his own, worth just under $70 million. Not on par with the deal Wells got, but still nothing to sneeze at.

Then in 2008, Wells couldn't seem to stay healthy, but was more effective in limited time, posting 2 WAR. His defense wasn't the same anymore, but he showed that he could still put up pretty good offensive numbers. Rios had a solid season as well, although his power dropped compared to '07. (Rios' season brings up a very interesting discrepancy between the WAR numbers on Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs. B-R has his WAR listed at 2.2, while FG has it at 5.6, the highest mark of his career. If I had to pick one that I feel is more accurate, I would lean more towards FG's, but I really don't think it should be that high. I think somewhere around 4 would be more accurate.)

2009 was where it really went bad for the two cornerstones of the Blue Jays outfield. Wells slumped his way through another unimpressive season, posting 0.3 WAR above replacement. By this time, his CF play was well below average, and possibly the worst in the majors. Rios meanwhile, was playing so poor that in August the Blue Jays allowed the White Sox to claim him off waivers outright. It was hard to imagine that they would allow the guy that they had signed to a 7 year deal only 18 months prior to leave without receiving anything in return, except when you look at his stats. At the time of the waiver claim, Rios had produced a grand total of -1.3 WAR and was one of the worst everyday players in baseball. Things were grim.

Wells and Rios both had a bit of a resurgence in 2010. Wells rediscovered his power stroke, and ended up posting an above average 4.4 WAR for the Blue Jays. Rios provided 3 WAR for the White Sox. It was looking like both players were turning their careers around. It turns out that Wells' productive season was really the best gift he could have ever gotten the Jays, as they were able to unload him and his bloated contract on the Angels in the off-season. Both keystones of the Jays' outfield were now gone.

This brings us to 2011. Both Rios and Wells are having atrocious seasons. They both rank in the bottom 10 everyday players in baseball according to WAR. (Using FG WAR) They have the two lowest OBP's in baseball. They also have the two lowest BABIP's of anyone in baseball. Bad luck could be playing a part in their decline, but if I had to go off my gut feeling, I would say that neither will ever produce more than 2 WAR in a season under their current contracts. The Blue Jays' franchise players have both turned into nearly the worst players in baseball. The good news for me as a Blue Jays fan is that they're doing it for someone else.