Johnny Cueto’s Lost Counts

Way back on April 11 of last year, when the Matt Williams-led Nationals were still World Series favorites and Jed Lowrie was still the starting shortstop for the Astros, an unassuming at-bat took place between Matt Carpenter and Johnny Cueto in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cueto, facing his 45th batter of the season, quickly got ahead in the count, 0-2, spotting consecutive fastballs on the outer edge against which Carpenter could only muster a foul ball. Carpenter, who led the league in pitches per plate appearance in 2014, with 4.4, took a third-pitch fastball just inside for ball one. Then another fastball, outside, for ball two. Then a similar fastball, this one a bit lower and still outside for ball three. With the count now full, Carpenter took one more pitch, a low slider, for ball four, laid down his bat and took his base.

It’s not the kind of thing that makes fans jump up out of their seats, or really have any kind of reaction from their seats. It’s just a walk, seemingly as unremarkable as any other, especially given Carpenter’s role in the event, if not for the fact that it came after an 0-2 count, something Chris Sale only let happen once in 854 batters faced last year. Cueto did it in his second start, and then nine more times throughout the course of the year, more than anyone else in baseball save for Baltimore’s Ubaldo Jimenez.

Cueto was one of only four pitchers to break the 10-walk threshold after 0-2 counts, joining Jimenez, Trevor Bauer and Gio Gonzalez. Given enough tries, a hardcore baseball fan probably could have guessed those three names. Bauer, Gonzalez, and Jimenez are the kind of guys who issue plenty of walks all season long, so they’re the kind of guys one might expect to issue plenty of walks after 0-2 counts, too. Those three each routinely post walk rates close to or north of 10%. Cueto, on the other hand, walked just 5% of his batters last year, and is known for possessing impeccable command.

Going back several seasons, Cueto’s place on the leaderboard of 0-2 counts lost to walks remains equally eye-popping:

Cueto is the only pitcher in the top five with an overall walk rate under 8%, and therefore leads the top 10 in the percentage of his total walks that come after he’s ahead of the batter 0-2. Putting that into more perspective: since 2013, Cueto’s walked 129 batters, and 15% of those walks started out as an 0-2 count. As effective and entertaining as Cueto may be, this must be the sort of thing that’s downright maddening for fans, coaches, and teammates alike.

At first, you wonder if this isn’t a psychological thing. Cueto is as animated a pitcher as you’ll find in baseball, yelling at himself on the mound after pitches, using up to four different deliveries per batter, and reacting to harmless, first-inning walks like this:

And as much as I don’t like trying to get inside the head of an athlete in an attempt explain his on-field performance, it’s hard not to wonder whether something in Cueto’s brain changes when he reaches an 0-2 count, making him more susceptible than other pitchers with similar ability to issue walks after getting ahead. As the season went on, Cueto altered his motion with two strikes more and more, going with the “quick pitch” delivery more than two-thirds of the time through July and part of August. Cueto isn’t afraid to be unconventional, and it’s part of what makes him so great. That doesn’t mean it can’t get him in trouble sometimes, too.

The other explanation is that Cueto’s unusually high rate of 0-2 counts-turned-walks could actually be an extension of one of his most distinguished abilities. Cueto had one of the worst two-strike performances in baseball last year, another list on which he looks out of place as one of just two pitchers in the top 10 with a strikeout rate north of 20%. The common thread that links these two peculiar positions on leaderboards could be Cueto’s knack for pitching on the outer edges of the plate.

Last year, Cueto was a top-five pitcher in throwing to the horizontal edges. This helps explain how Cueto is able to run one of the highest called-strikeout rates in baseball, something he picked up in 2014. It helps explain how he’s able to consistently generate soft contact and maintain such low batting averages on balls in play. And it could even help explain all the 0-2 counts-turned-walks, which may be more of a feature than a bug.

After all, are the following balls in at-bats where Cueto lost an 0-2 count to a walk the product of excessive nibbling, or simply Cueto narrowly missing his spots on pitches that so often earn him called third strikes and two-strike tappers?

Whereas Bauer, Gonzalez, Jimenez and Wilson may lose their 0-2 counts to walks due largely to shaky command, Cueto’s lost counts may manifest themselves for the opposite reason — because his command is so exceptional. Cueto’s ability to work the outer edges of the plate is matched by few other pitchers in baseball, and so Cueto trusts himself to do so, regardless of the count. Cueto doesn’t blow hitters away; he finesses them. Sometimes, he’s going to narrowly miss those spots and it will lead to an exasperating walk in an at-bat that he appeared to have wrapped up after two pitches. But it’s by design. If you’re a Giants fan getting acclimated to Cueto’s pitching style this year and you find yourself getting frustrated after he loses an 0-2 count to a walk — don’t. Those very pitches that might have led to the walk are part of the reason why he’s so good in the first place.