Johnny Cueto calms nervous K.C. by being brilliant in Game 2 of World Series
Jeff Passan By Jeff Passan
9 hours ago
Yahoo Sports
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Out came Johnny Cueto, the toast of this baseball-mad town, and he hopped over the first-base line, did a little shimmy-shake and loped toward the mound he had owned for the previous eight innings. He was finishing Game 2 of the World Series. If it was his last time pitching in a Royals uniform, Cueto wanted the city to remember him like this.
Over the three previous months, Cueto was a contradiction wrapped in dreadlocks, frustratingly brilliant one start and brilliantly frustrating the next. In his previous two playoff outings, he saved the Royals' season and detonated a nuclear stink bomb. By the ninth inning Wednesday, he answered with conviction which version of him would show up. The New York Mets' puzzled looks and feeble swings confirmed: This wasn't Good Johnny Cueto; it was Great Johnny Cueto.
And when his 122nd pitch settled into the glove of Paulo Orlando and the Royals cinched a 7-1 victory that gave them a two-games-to-none lead over the Mets in the World Series, Cueto tapped his heart, pointed to the sky and soaked in the admiration of 40,410 at Kauffman Stadium who walked through the turnstiles with low expectations and exited having witnessed a historic outing.
The Mets mustered two hits, both by Lucas Duda, one an infield squibber and the other a dink into left field, neither of which left the bat at a velocity that would warrant a speeding ticket. The other Mets went 0-for-25 against Cueto, leading to the first World Series complete game with two or fewer hits since Greg Maddux in 1995 and the first by an American League pitcher in 48 years.
"That's what they brought me here for," Cueto said. "To help win a World Series."
When Kansas City traded three hard-throwing left-handed pitching prospects to Cincinnati for Cueto in late July, it expected the comfort and security of a frontline starter. Instead, the Royals got the comfort of walking on hot coals and the security of a bank vault held shut by a twisty tie, Cueto so inconsistent, so maddeningly frustrating, that he lost his spot atop the rotation and necessitated the Royals line up their World Series staff so he could pitch at home, where the team believes he's calmest.
Before Game 2, Cueto went through a routine he couldn't in Toronto. He spent most of the afternoon at his residence and got a long massage from his trainer, Aquiles Torrealba. He was relaxed – not so relaxed that he was snapping Instagram selfies, as he's wont to do, but enough that when he arrived at Kauffman Stadium and started warming up, the Royals sensed the Cueto who gave up eight runs in two innings during the ALCS wasn't showing up.
[Yahoo Daily Fantasy Football: First place wins $100K in our $600K contest for Week 8]
Neither, for that matter, did the Mets who pilloried the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. Cueto spent most of the night working outside of the rulebook strike zone, putting just 50 pitches in the rectangle. Only 23 were in the bottom half of the zone, where he typically tries to work. Cueto struck out only four and walked three, his outing more excellent than dominant. Even he admitted that he was better in Game 5 of the division series, when he retired 19 straight Houston Astros hitters to cap off an eight-inning statement in a win-or-go-home affair.
This was different, like a song that builds layer on top of layer until the sound grows symphonic. Duda's second hit drove home Daniel Murphy in the fourth inning and staked the Mets a 1-0 lead, and while Cueto wiggled out of that jam, he looked far from invincible. Then came 1-2-3 innings in the fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth, each building off the previous one, all wholly vital considering Game 1 lasted 14 innings and left the Royals' bullpen like an iPhone with too many apps open.
Royals closer Wade Davis spent much of the eighth inning warming until the Royals strung together their second big inning of the night. The first came against Mets starter Jacob deGrom, who witnessed what so many others have this postseason: The Royals' offense is unrelenting and seemingly incapable of beating itself.
Walking No. 8 hitter Alex Gordon to lead off the fifth was deGrom's first mistake. Giving up a base hit to No. 9 hitter Alex Rios wasn't much better. After Alcides Escobar twice failed to bunt them over, he lashed an 0-2 pitch up the middle to score Gordon and tie the game. Then came a two-out single from Eric Hosmer, another from Kendrys Morales and one more run-scoring base hit up the middle from Mike Moustakas to extend the lead to 4-1.
This was classic Royals. Of the 94 pitches deGrom threw, the Royals swung and missed at three and fouled off 23. They didn't whiff on a single fastball. Only once this season had deGrom induced so few swings and misses, and he paid with the hard contact on which Kansas City prides itself. More came in the eighth, when they chased a leadoff single with two doubles and a triple, plated three more runs and prompted a call to the K.C. bullpen to stop warming Davis.
On the bench, Cueto had asked manager Ned Yost to stay in the game. He wanted to be the first Dominican player to throw a complete game in the World Series, the first Royal to do so since Bret Saberhagen in Game 7 of the 1985 series, the only time Kansas City won a championship. In the bullpen, the Royals' relievers braced themselves for the moment. "They're going to go nuts when he runs back out there," reliever Ryan Madson told bullpen mate Luke Hochevar.
Nuts they went, Cueto's disastrous five-start stretch that bridged August and September with water underneath it, the butterflies that accompanied everyone into the stadium fluttering elsewhere. Cueto was finishing this damn thing, Madson said, because "that's what everybody wanted."
He did it for the Royals that hung with him during those lean times and for country mate and Game 1 starter Edinson Volquez, back in the Dominican Republic mourning the loss of his father, and most of all for himself. And not just because free agency beckons and Cueto wanted to remind the world there is a reason he came into this season with a presumed $150 million price tag. If it were easy to find your name alongside that of Maddux, surely others would embrace the opportunity. Pitching is grueling, a series of mental landmines and physical exigencies, and pitching well takes even more.
"That's exactly what I expected from him," said Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain, who might've been the only one. "He showed up once again. Hopefully, we don't have to use him anymore."
The implication there is obvious. Cueto isn't slated to pitch again until Game 6, and the Royals carry a two-game lead to Citi Field. The Mets play well there and, like in Games 1 and 2, they've got the on-paper starting-pitching advantage. And yet Kansas City sees evenings like Game 2 as the norm. They're not saying it because they know better, last year's World Series loss still crudo raw. The Royals believe they're the superior team, though, especially when Cueto can coax a performance out of his right arm like Wednesday's.
All the Royals needed was good, and they got great. A hop, a shimmy-shake and a memory that won't be erased, no matter what happens next.
sports.yahoo.com/news/johnny-cueto-calms-nervous-k-c--with-a-gem-in-game-2-063730590.html
