CHICAGO -- Baseball has found a simultaneously fair and exciting way to punish teams that hazard the wild-card route to the World Series. Not only are those teams’ chances cut immediately in half, more or less, but their best-laid pitching plans get laid asunder.
The San Francisco Giants would have preferred matching Jon Lester’s October mastery with Madison Bumgarner’s October sorcery, but instead we all got treated to a riddle: What happens when an unstoppable force, Noah Syndergaard, meets an immovable object, Bumgarner? Answer: The one who stays in the game longest -- Bumgarner -- wins.
Which brings the Giants to Wrigley Field to face the intimidating Chicago Cubs in the National League Division Series that starts Friday night. It also brings them to their $130 million Plan B. When they signed Johnny Cueto to a six-year deal shortly after the last winter meetings, they may not have had this exact scenario in mind, but it was probably pretty close to what they were thinking. In an ideal world, you have four aces in the postseason, but two can take you a long way.
The Cubs’ biggest advantage in this series is their deep rotation, which performed better than most people expected. Yet on paper, that advantage doesn’t emerge until they get beyond Cueto, who could be good enough to match Lester pitch for pitch. He may not have Lester’s long résumé of success in October, but he pitched two dominant games for the Kansas City Royals last October, including a complete-game beauty in Game 2 of the World Series.
He also spent 7½ years facing the Cubs regularly while pitching for the Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago is batting .184 with a .525 OPS in 141 at-bats against him.
Despite all that, Cueto has long been a pitcher who inspires more questions than trust, it would seem. Despite ace-like numbers -- an 18-5 record and 2.79 ERA -- people rarely seem to take Cueto seriously as a top-of-the-rotation guy.
Maybe it’s because he’s so much fun to watch. It’s easy to forget he’s getting everybody out while he’s shaking out his dreadlocks and wiggling his butt in the direction of a runner at first base. He quick-pitches. Or slows his delivery waaaaaay doooooooown. He turns his body Luis Tiant-style on batters. He hides the ball. He’ll do a slide step when there is no runner on base.
“I don’t necessarily think he tries to entertain,” said one scout who has seen him throughout his career. “I think it’s just a natural part of what he is as a pitcher. He just knows how to get guys out and, if he’s got to invent something along the way, he does. I think he’s one of the most unique guys in our game.”
The scout points out one other attribute Cueto doesn’t get credit for: pitching intelligence. He learned his changeup from one of the greatest all-time at throwing it: Mario Soto. He learned elements of inventiveness and deception from Bronson Arroyo when they pitched together on the Reds. At other times, he has simply added and subtracted elements of his various deliveries on his own, all aimed at disrupting hitters’ timing. That helps explain why he can appear overpowering with a fastball that usually hovers in the 92 mph range.
“Johnny is exceptionally bright and we don’t always say that about guys who don’t speak our language, because it doesn’t always get conveyed for them,” the scout said. “But watch all the things he does. He doesn’t have a great body -- he’s not a big, physical man -- but he deceives hitters. He can field his position well. He’s got an ugly swing, but he makes hard contact. He’s an unorthodox bunter, but he gets the ball down. It’s pretty apparent he just knows how to play the game and has innate ability.”
Where Bumgarner-Syndergaard was all about brawn, two huge guys growling and snorting their way through a game, Lester and Cueto will be more about finesse, brains and the little things. Both are deeply talented, of course, but they use their veteran savvy with the devastating effect of a Syndergaard fastball at the letters.
The Giants will take their chances in a game that could prove critical to the series. If they can steal one of the two games here, they’ll have Bumgarner ready to go in Game 3 at AT&T Park, and needing to beat him rarely works out well for opposing teams at this time of year.