With Lance Lynn Sidelined, the White Sox Turn to Johnny Cueto

Last Saturday, the White Sox rotation took a hit when Lance Lynn limped off the mound in pain after tearing a tendon in his right knee. In the wee hours of Tuesday, just before Lynn underwent surgery, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that Chicago signed free agent Johnny Cueto to a minor league deal. The move helps to replenish the team’s depth and offers the promise of another go-round for for a pitcher who has been beset by injuries in recent years but has long ranked among the game’s most entertaining hurlers.

Via ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the 36-year-old Cueto will make a prorated share of $4.2 million dollars if he’s in the majors. According to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, he has a May 15 opt-out date if he’s still in the minors.

Cueto spent the past six seasons with the Giants via a $130 million deal, but the team cut bait last November by declining his $22 million option for this season, instead paying him a $5 million buyout — a move that was hardly a surprise given his ongoing injury problems. After making a full complement of 32 starts in 2016, he never made more than 25 in a season during the remainder of his deal. Blisters limited him to 25 turns in 2017, and an ankle sprain and Tommy John surgery to just 13 in ’18-19. He did make 12 starts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but just 21 last year, scattered around separate trips to the injured list for a grade 1 lat strain, a flexor strain, COVID-19 protocol, and then an elbow strain that limited him to just one September appearance, the first relief appearance of his major league career.

Despite those maladies, Cueto’s 4.08 ERA (101 ERA-), 4.05 FIP (100 FIP-), and 1.5 WAR made for his best season since 2016, even though his 114.2 innings were 32.2 fewer than his total in ’17, when he produced 1.2 WAR. He struck out 20% of batters, right at his career average but placing him in just the 25th percentile according to Statcast; walked just 6.1% (good for the 75th percentile); and allowed 1.18 homers per nine, 0.15 lower than the major league average for starters. Though his exit velocity and barrel and hard-hit rates were better than average, with his 6.4% barrel rate coming in at the 71st percentile, his low strikeout rate inflated his xERA to a gaudy 4.99.

Within the context of what was essentially league-average work, a couple aspects of Cueto’s performance stand out as encouraging. His average four-seam fastball velocity of 91.8 mph was his best since 2016, marking his third straight season where that figure has gone up (albeit incrementally). Batters hit just .219 and slugged .342 against the pitch, his best marks in the same period once you wave off the small-sample years interrupted by Tommy John surgery. His 13.0% swinging-strike rate on the pitch and his 28.1% whiffs-per-swing rate were both career highs, the latter of which placed him in the 84th percentile among pitchers with at least 100 four-seamers.

If that’s the good news, well, the bad news is that his sinker and secondary offerings — mainly a slider and changeup — were considerably less effective. Batters slugged .570 against the slider, .552 against the sinker, and .456 against the change, the last of which at least produced a respectable 14.3% swinging-strike rate. His slider, though, produced just a 5.1% swinging-strike rate and a 12.6% chase rate; the pitch wasn’t fooling anybody except maybe Cueto himself.

With over 2,000 innings on his big league odometer, Cueto isn’t the pitcher he once was — the guy who pitched to a 2.73 ERA and 3.32 FIP, topped 4.0 WAR four times from 2011 to ’16, and made two All-Star teams. But at that salary, the White Sox aren’t paying him to be that guy, just a solid back-end complement to a rotation that ranked seventh in the majors in our preseason Positional Power Rankings and as high as fourth before Lynn’s injury and the Padres’ acquisition of Sean Manaea. The unit is headed by Lucas Giolito, who has received down-ballot Cy Young votes in each of the past three seasons and ranked sixth in the majors with 11.2 WAR, and Dylan Cease, who’s coming off a breakout campaign. The team is hoping for a rebound from Dallas Keuchel, who was dreadful last year, and a smooth transition to the rotation by Michael Kopech, who spent most of last year in the bullpen after missing all of 2019 due to Tommy John surgery and all of ’20 after opting out for personal reasons.

Odds are that the White Sox will miss Lynn at least somewhat, given that over the past three seasons he’s ranked among the game’s best, ranking fourth in WAR (12.3), fifth in innings (449.1), and seventh in both ERA (3.26) and WAR (3.39). The 34-year-old righty, who dealt with right knee inflammation last year, appeared to injure himself during a pitch in the fourth inning of Saturday’s game against the Diamondbacks. He’ll probably wind up missing about two months, first going four weeks without throwing off a mound and then spending another four weeks building up his pitch counts.

Hence Cueto, the only remaining free-agent starter besides Matt Harvey who produced at least 1.0 WAR last year. He had been throwing in the Dominican Republic and had been in contact with Chicago pitching coach Ethan Katz, who was the Giants’ assistant pitching coach in 2020. Manager Tony La Russa expressed excitement at the addition, adding, “He’s had excellent command of three or four pitches that became like 10 or 12 because he had different angles coming at you.”

According La Russa, Cueto will head to Triple-A Charlotte to start the season. When asked how soon the pitcher would be ready to join the big club, the manager replied, “Hoping not long.” Presumably, Cueto will need to build up his pitch count and get into game shape. In the meantime, Reynaldo López and/or Vince Velasquez will fill the vacancy in the rotation, with one or the other starting the home opener next Tuesday against the Mariners after Giolito, Cease, and Kopech go against the Tigers in Detroit over the weekend, and Keuchel following on Wednesday. Lopez spent the first half of last season at Charlotte; after undergoing eye surgery and reworking his mechanics, he pitched well in a swingman role last year (3.43 ERA, 4.19 FIP, 57.2 innings). Velazquez, on the other hand, was largely ineffective with both the Phillies and the Padres, getting torched for a 6.30 ERA and 5.86 FIP.

Even if he’s no longer a front-of-the-rotation talent, Cueto offers the possibility of improving upon those options, not only during Lynn’s absence but also as a fill-in if further injuries arrive or if the team needs to manage workloads, particularly that of Kopech, who threw just 69.1 innings last year. Hopefully it won’t be too long before he’s once again showing off his shimmy and his unique assortment of deliveries and angles.