At best, Johnny Cueto for six years and $130 million gives the San Francisco Giants the bargain of the winter.
Don't believe it? Check the numbers, the other numbers, the ones that show Cueto with the second-best ERA in the major leagues over the last five seasons. He's at 2.71, behind Clayton Kershaw but just ahead of Zack Greinke (2.82), the guy who will cost the Arizona Diamondbacks $76.5 million more over the same six years.
Oh, and the 29-year-old Cueto is two-and-a-half years younger than Greinke. And after pitching to that 2.71 ERA while playing most of his home games at the hitter-friendly ballpark the Cincinnati Reds call home, he's about to move to the pitcher-friendly home of the Giants.
You can make this one sound really good, and you can bet the Giants will when they discuss the deal agreed to Monday (and first reported by Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com).
It could work out great for the Giants, with another ace to team with Madison Bumgarner atop their rotation. It could work out just as well for Cueto, which is why I argued in this space three weeks ago that he should want to sign with the Giants.
That's could rather than should. It's could, because the reason the Giants were able to sign Cueto for a fraction of what Greinke and David Price signed for (and less per year than Jordan Zimmermann got from the Detroit Tigers) is that Cueto carries some mystery along with that 2.71 ERA.
There's been speculation for months about his health, speculation that didn't completely go away even when he topped 200 innings for the third time in four seasons, or when he made four more starts in the postseason for the Kansas City Royals.
Cueto's horrible ALCS start in Toronto raised more questions, even though his two huge postseason wins—Game 5 of the division series and Game 2 of the World Series—were better than anything Price has done in October.
If you're going to pay a guy $21.7 million a year, you'd like him to be dependable enough that you don't need to carefully pick where he pitches. The Royals felt a need to arrange their World Series rotation so Cueto would pitch only at home.
Then again, if Cueto came with fewer questions, he'd also come with the same $30-plus-million-a-year price tag as Price and Greinke. Instead, the Giants got him at an amount that allowed them to also sign Jeff Samardzija for five years and $90 million.
With Bumgarner, Cueto and Samardzija at the top of the rotation, the Giants can match up to Arizona's Greinke, Patrick Corbin and Shelby Miller (and easily top anyone the Los Angeles Dodgers can currently team with Kershaw). The Giants can fill out their rotation with veterans Matt Cain and Jake Peavy or with Chris Heston, who had a 3.95 ERA (and a no-hitter) as a rookie.
The Giants could still use something of an offensive boost. Someone such as Justin Upton or Yoenis Cespedes would work, but as Alex Pavlovic of CSNBayArea.com tweeted Monday afternoon, they've probably spent their big money for this winter:
The Giants went into the winter with some money to spend, and with a plan to fulfill their every-other-year destiny. The plan was to sign a difference-making pitcher, and while the Giants' initial hope was that it would be Greinke, they barely had to course correct when he went to Arizona instead.
They quickly signed Samardzija but had enough money left to get Cueto, too.
He was still out there on the market, the one big pitcher remaining. He had turned down $120 million for six years from the Diamondbacks, and when the winter meetings ended last week there, there was some talk that Cueto and his agent Bryce Dixon had made a mistake.
Instead, Cueto ended up in a place he can thrive, with a manager (Bruce Bochy), pitching coach (Dave Righetti) and catcher (Buster Posey) who have a history of getting the most out of pitchers. He should find every bit the comfort zone he had in Cincinnati—the one he eventually found in Kansas City in time to help the Royals win a World Series.
The Giants and their fans even love a little eccentricity. Check out how the team welcomed Cueto on Twitter:
He has that hair, and he has that ring, the one Greinke and Price are still chasing. That's got to be worth something.
Something like six years and $130 million.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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