If you were to sit down and make a list of the best pitchers in baseball from 2010-16, you’d be hard-pressed not to include Johnny Cueto in some capacity. The two-time All-Star finished among the top six in National League Cy Young voting three times in that stretch, including a runner-up finish to Clayton Kershaw in 2014. He received at least one down-ballot MVP vote in all three of those seasons as well. From 2010-16, Cueto turned in a 2.86 ERA, a 20.6% strikeout rate (at a time when that number was much more impressive than it is in 2022) and a terrific 6.2% walk rate. Cueto was viewed as a No. 1 or No. 2 starter, and rightly so. He ranked fourth out of 228 qualified starting pitchers in ERA during that time, and his 1294 2/3 innings were the 16th-most in baseball.

Given that context, it’s no surprise that Cueto hit the open market as one of the most in-demand free agents in the game following the 2015 season. He’d struggled a bit following his trade from Cincinnati to Kansas City, but Cueto’s final impression on the Royals was a two-hit, one-run complete game in Game 2 of the World Series, which the Royals won 7-1. Not a bad way to set out into free agency for the first time.

Cueto’s six-year, $132MM contract with the Giants made him the third-highest-paid pitcher of the 2015-16 offseason, trailing only David Price and Zack Greinke’s pair of $200MM+ deals (and beating MLBTR’s expectations by a year in the process). For the first year of his contract, the signing looked quite strong. Cueto hurled 219 2/3 innings of 2.79 ERA ball, made the All-Star team, and enjoyed both Cy Young and MVP votes in his first year with San Francisco. The Giants’ “even-year” dynasty was cut short at three years (2010, 2012, 2014) — but not for any fault of Cueto’s. He made one appearance in the playoffs that winter and took a brutal complete-game loss that saw him allow just one run on three hits and no walks with 10 strikeouts against the eventual-champion Cubs.

Cueto missed a handful of starts in 2017 due to an ongoing blister issue and wasn’t at his best when healthy. His 4.52 ERA that year was his worst since his rookie campaign back in 2008, and it was a particularly poorly-timed slump, as Cueto could’ve opted out of the final four years of his contract and tested the market a second time, had he turned in another healthy season of Cy-caliber results. Ankle and elbow injuries wound up hobbling Cueto in 2018, and by August of that season, he was headed for Tommy John surgery. Cueto returned late in the 2019 season and tossed 16 pedestrian innings, and his work in the shortened 2020 campaign was the worst of his career (5.40 ERA, career-high walk rate).

Expectations for Cueto were light heading into the 2021 season, then, which made his rebound effort with the Giants something of a pleasant surprise. Cueto missed nearly a month with a lat strain and was on the IL for much of September with an elbow strain. The latter of those two injuries is particularly concerning, since we didn’t see much from Cueto after he hit the IL. He made a lone rehab appearance in the minors (1 2/3 innings) and pitched 2 1/3 innings of relief in the Majors on Sept. 30.