Jose Cuas Is More Than Just a Nice Story for the Royals
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Being a rookie reliever in MLB can be difficult, but Jose Cuas has been serviceable so far to start his career. Most fans know of his story of getting back into baseball and that made him a fan favorite, but his play is also doing that.
Since his first call-up on May 30, Cuas has been serviceable in the arm barn for the Royals. Nothing really stands out, though. He has a 3.86 ERA, 7.36 K/9 and a .299 BABIP, which are all serviceable numbers for a rookie reliever. There are some issues he has run into with the basic stats, however.
For one, Cuas's BB/9 is really high (5.61) for a guy who doesn't strike out a lot of batters for a reliever. That leaves him with a strikeout rate of 17.6% and a walk rate of 13.4%. Adding to this is his WHIP of 1.60, which isn't good for any pitcher — let alone a reliever. With this in mind, let's get into the deeper stats for Cuas.
Starting with the expected stats, Cuas is around league average in all of them for the most part. Looking at FIP, Cuas sees a significant spike (4.71) compared to his ERA. This basically means that in terms of the three true outcomes (Ks, BBs, and HRs), Cuas has not been very good with the former two but has a good HR/9 of 0.70.
Taking FIP and ERA to the next level with ERA+ and FIP-, Cuas has some interesting splits between the two. His ERA+ is 106 (6% above league average), but his FIP- of 121 (21% below league average) shows that he really needs to improve his strikeout and walk rates. With his FIP and FIP- being high by league standards, that makes his fWAR take a hit (-0.2). FanGraphs has the lowest value for Cuas of all three kinds of WAR, but bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) and WARP (Baseball Prospectus) have Cuas at 0 bWAR and 0.2 WARP.
Let's take a look at Cuas's arsenal of pitches to see what has worked for him and what hasn't. Cuas only throws two pitches that have enough data on them, and those are his sinker and slider. In terms of run values, both have been good for the most part with run values of -1. One could say that this is good for Cuas, but run value has some issues as a stat due to the flat run value/expectancy of each kind of hit and outcome (for example, groundballs always have a negative R/PA). Here is a good article going over run value and its applications.
The reason Cuas's run values are deceptive is due to the fact that he gets a lot of groundballs (51.9%). He has shown a lot of promise early on in his MLB career but, additionally, he needs to limit the number of walks he gives up because he is not going to be a high strike-out reliever.
Another interesting thing about Cuas's season is his leverage splits. These splits are interesting because he is so much better when runners are on or with runners in scoring position. He isn't good with the bases empty, giving up hits at a .368 clip with an OBP of .489, and a .474 SLG. He actually has the same issue Collin Snider had earlier in the year, as he could put out fires started by others but couldn't put out the fires he makes.
Although Cuas has some glaring issues as a reliever with giving up walks or not being great with the bases empty, he has shown some potential to be an important part of the Royals bullpen. Plus, as a sidearm pitcher who can throw with some heat (avg. 93mph), he can be really filthy as a reliever for a couple of years. Pitchers with his blend of profile and underlying metrics don't come around often.
