Watched: Cincinnati @ New York Yankees - 6/22/08

[click on pictures for a larger view]

My East Coast tour continued - after leaving Boston and Fenway Park on Friday the 20th of June, I made my way to New York and Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees play the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday June 22. This was, actually, the reason for my trip - I wanted to see a game at historic Yankee Stadium in its last season. The Stadium doesn't have the charm of Wrigley or Fenway, but there is still a lot of history at the park that makes it impressive to visit.

One of the things that I really wanted to visit was Monument Park in Centerfield, but unfortunately, we didn't make it to the park in time and this is as close as I got to it:

As for the game, we got to see a matchup of Andy Pettitte and Johnny Cueto (who I've written about before). Pettitte was riding a scoreless streak, which continued to nineteen innings before he was taken out of the game. He was extremely sharp. Here is a sequence that shows his pitching motion:

Cueto has struggled some since his first two starts that I so glowingly wrote about, but I was still very interested to see him pitch in person. He was credited with the loss, but he pitched five very strong innings before the rains came, striking out seven while giving up one run on four hits. Here is Johnny's pitching motion:

Ken Griffey, Jr. hit a homerun late in the game that I missed, but I did get a nice picture of his beautiful follow through.

The Yankees prevailed in this game mainly due to Pettitte's dominance. The Reds lineup leans heavily to the left with Griffey, Bruce, Votto and Adam Dunn (who did not start) as their big power bats and Griffey, Bruce and Votto were a combined 1-7 against Pettitte. By the time Pettitte came out after the sixth inning the Yankees were ahead 4-0 and both teams wanted to get the game over with after a fifty-five minute rain delay.

I am left to wonder what might have been without the rain. Cueto had only thrown 75 pitches and was down 1-0 when the rain came and washed out the rest of his afternoon. Meanwhile Pettitte had thrown 97 pitches through six innings when the rain came. It is certainly plausible that Cueto could have remained in the game another couple of innings and held the Yankees at bay while the Reds tried to mount a comeback, only down a run. Instead, the relief corps for the Reds immediately surrendered three runs after the rain delay and the Yankees cruised to victory.

Watched: Johnny Cueto

Johnny Cueto's major league debut on April 3rd was the talk of the baseball world last week. The 22 year old struck out 10 in seven innings, giving up only one hit, a Justin Upton solo homerun. Cueto (pronounced 'Kway-tow') was signed by Cincinnati out of the Dominican Republic as a 19 year old and flew through their minor league system.

Tonight was Johnny's second start, so I decided to check him out. I have read comparisons between Cueto and a young Pedro Martinez, and I can understand that: they are both Dominican, they are both slight of build (Cueto is a bit stockier, though), and they both have electric stuff. Tonight, though, the FSN Ohio crew showed a side-by-side comparison of Cueto's pitching motion next to Bob Gibson's motion and they are very similar. Gibson is a bit taller than Cueto, but the motion and especially the follow through (falling off towards first base) are very similar.

Cueto pitched well again tonight, although he wasn't quite as dominant. He came out of the game after 6.1 innings, having given up 5 hits and 2 earned runs, while striking out 8. The statistic that I find most impressive is that he did not walk a single batter (which gives him a total of zero on the year so far in 13.1 innings). He throws four plus pitches: a 2 seam fastball, a 4 seam fastball, a slider, and a changeup. He seemed to mix them well, throwing any of his pitches on any count. It seemed that he gave up on his 2 seam fastball after missing a few times with it early - it was coming in at 91-92mph and had a lot of run to it. His 4 seam fastball sits around 94-96mph, but was very straight [edit - note: pitch f/x seems to disagree with me here, as almost all of his fastballs show at least some movement]. The few times that he got in trouble (other than a hanging slider that Bill Hall hit over the leftfield fence) it seemed like he relied too much on the 4 seam fastball and the Brewers hitters were able to sit on it.

Both his slider and his changeup can be used as put-away pitches. The slider is the type that is usually thrown out of the strikezone to get the batter to chase, which works well with his fastball. The changeup is used similarly, as he has very good arm action and the pitch fades down and in to a righthanded hitter. He used both pitches as strikeout pitches and to setup a high fastball for the strikeout.

One of the concerns with Cueto is with his workload. He is not a big guy and his manager (Dusty Baker) has a history of overworking his young pitchers (Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, please pick up a white courtesy phone). I was especially curious to see how Dusty would handle him as the game wore on. The Reds were down 1-0 in the top of the seventh inning when Cueto's spot in the lineup came up with a man on second and one out. He had already thrown 86 pitches at that point, but Dusty did not pinch hit for him. Cueto grounded out to short, moving the runner to third (who eventually scored). I couldn't help thinking of Mark Prior and wondering if Dusty would run Cueto out there for 120 pitches. In the bottom of the seventh Cueto gave up a leadoff homerun to Hall (on the aforementioned hanging slider, which probably made every Reds fan scream obscenities at Dusty for not pinch hitting for the kid), but then struck out Corey Hart on some of the nastiest pitches he had thrown all night. Then Dusty took him out after 96 pitches.

Setting aside the questionable game management, I think 96 pitches is probably a smart limit for Cueto. He is only 22 years old and has less than 350 innings as a professional prior to this season. He is a dynamic talent and the Reds need to protect their investment in him. Hopefully Dusty Baker has learned from his failure to manage Prior and Woods' innings properly and Cueto won't suffer the same fate.