CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – AUGUST 12: Alex Verdugo of the New York Yankees jogs off the field in a game against the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field on August 12, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Matt Dirksen/Getty Images)

Yes. The answer to the question in the headline is yes. Johnny Cueto is now a free agent. And the Cincinnati Reds are desperate for starting pitching. They have been churning and burning through pitching options for the last month trying to just survive until the end of the season. Things are so bad that they started Julian Aguiar, a 23-year-old starter, on short rest while being 16 games out of first place. He was on a limited pitch count but the point still stands – this team is in desperation and survival mode at this point of the year with so many starting pitchers on the injured list. They don’t need good pitching, necessarily. They just need enough innings to keep guys healthy.
Photo: Jon Gudorf

Last week the Reds called up a guy who was pitching in Korea less than a month ago. Last week the Reds called up a guy who hadn’t pitched in the big leagues in a full on decade. Johnny Cueto hasn’t exactly been kicking team’s butts over the last two years while pitching for Miami and Los Angeles (Angels), but he’s healthy and he can probably give you badly needed innings. And honestly, with the team truly out of contention, he might bring in a few fans that otherwise had long moved on to college football and or the NFL season.

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This season has seen Cueto start 12 games in Triple-A between the Rangers and Angels organizations. He threw 61.1 innings and had an ERA of 4.84. Again, that’s not exactly good, but the Reds have long been out of “good” options. What they need are innings. And in his last seven starts between Triple-A and the big leagues, Cueto has thrown six or more innings in four of them and he completed five innings in the other three – while pitching into the 6th in his last start but failed to record an out in that inning against the Tigers.

Given where he’s at in his career, he’s probably not going to cost more than the league minimum, which at this point of the season is about $100,000. Bring him in, let him start every 5th day and eat some innings to get you through the end of the year. There’s nothing to lose here but a tiny amount of money and someone who is on the 40-man roster who will need to be cleared off of it that you probably were going to to not bring back after this season anyways.