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35 BAY AREA NEWS GROUP PLAY BALL THE GIANTS guy,"Yostsaidofhis6-foot-3, 240-pound backstop. "It took some time for S alvy to g et dow n to where Johnny was comfort - able throwing his pitches. "We had a side session, and (Perez) said, 'Show me what you want. I'll do whatever you need me to do. Just show me.' And Johnny told him, 'If I miss, I want to miss down.' "And from that point they had success together." INHISLONEWORLDSERIES start, Cueto was back to his un- predictable best. He allowed only two hits, with three walks and four strikeouts. Cueto also threw 122 snow- flakes, none of them quite alike. The pitcher was so wildly creative in that game that August Fager - strom of FanGraphs.com was in- spired to retroactively put Cueto's deliveries on a spreadsheet. Using Passan's four categories, he came up with this: Q The Quick Pitch: 48percent Q The Tiant: 25percent Q The Traditional: 20percent Q The Rocking Chair: 7percent In being unpredictable, Cueto sometimes can look unhinged. The Rocking Chair delivery, in particular, can look like a goof. For that windup, Cueto does a Tiant-style turn, then pauses as he comes back around to face the plate. His right shoulder dips, then his left, then he shakes his right shoulder one more time before releasing the pitch. But Bryan Price, who served as Cueto's pitching coach and later manager in Cincinnati, grew to know better than anyone that there was a thought process behind each pitch. Price said this spring that Cue - to is attacking, not ad-libbing. "Being a great pitcher, especial- ly a great starter, is being able to read swings," Price said. "He sees where a hitter is in the box and sees how the hitter approaches a pitch — down and away, inside, up, down. He understands what pitch in what area at what speed in what shape it needs to be thrown to get the result that he wants." CUETO BROKE INTO THE BIG leagues as a fairly conventional pitcher in 2008. He began toying with a hip turn in spring training two years later as a way of keep- ing the left side of his body from flying open. Cueto cut his walks per nine innings from 3.2 to 2.7 that season and hasn't been over 3.0 since. "Once he started getting into that Luis Tiant turn, he just started to get more creative," Price said this spring. "The thing about Johnny, he knows how to pitch. … He'll see something that someone else does, and he'll just incorpo - rate it into his game. "A lot of times it would catch us off guard because you see him with this huge turn, and he thinks he's Luis Tiant. But he ends up being able to execute the pitch. He just finds a way to beat you." Cueto keeps a wide variety of windups for the same reason other pitchers keep an assortment of pitches — to keep the hitters off-balance. But Tiant — the man, not the windup — insisted that Cueto would be better off using the full turn every time. He said Cueto can save his creativity for his arm slots but said it's the back turn that maximizes the deception. "When you do that kind of delivery, you hide the ball more from the hitter. You can fool them," Tiant said. "By the time the batter is picking up the ball, it's by him. It's too late." What does Cueto have to say about his windups? Well, that's about as secret as his next pitch. He prefers not to discuss his ap - proach in the media, figuring that the less hitters understand about his methods, the better. HIS TEAMMATES HEAR HIM talk plenty, though. "Johnny Cueto was a blast to be around," Yost said. "He's fun in the clubhouse TheGiants' Cueto reacts after pitching during spring training workouts in February. "I just admire that he laughed every time he wasn't pitching," said Royals manager Ned Yost when asked to reflect on Cueto's time with the team. When Cueto pitches using a Tiant-style turn, he twists so that his back almost faces the batter during windup. Then, he releases the ball with a flourish. ILLUSTRATIONSBYJEFFDURHAM JOSIE LEPE; PREVIOUS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES, ASSOCIATED PRESS every single day. "I just admire that he laughed ev er y t ime he wa sn 't pitch ing . H e was at the end of the bench and really rooting his tail off. 'Let's go guys. Gogogogo! Let's go!' You can hear him f ro m o ne end of the dugout to the other." Yost said he most admires Cueto for his ability to handle pressure, whi ch is som et hing the pi tch er ha s been doing from the start. Even Cueto's first professional tryout came with high stakes. In Ma rch 2 004, R eds sco ut Johnny Almaraz had an ear - ly-morning flight to catch. But a local tipster warned him that he'd be making a mistake if he left the Dominican Republic without at least looking at a power-armed 18-year-old. Th e s cou t a greed to give t his Cueto kid a shot, but he wasn't about to change his travel plans. So they met just after sunrise on an otherwise empty diamond in San Pedro de Macoris. The tryout lasted all of 15 pitches. "His delivery. His arm action. His ability to throw the ball downhill," Almaraz said by phone, recalling what jumped out at him. "But the most impressive thing is that he was able to command every single pitch inside the strike zone." The Reds promptly signed Cueto for $35,000. And Almaraz made his flight. Now, it's the Giants' turn for first impressions — albeit at a signifi - cantly higher price. In base salary alone, Cueto will earn $15million this season and $21million each year from 2017 to 2021. His job description is simple. The Giants bought this expensive new windup for the sole purpose of winning another World Series. Tiant will be watching, of course. How can he turn away? Staff writer Andrew Baggarly contributed to this report. DBROWN@MERCURYNEWS.COM