Johnny Cueto Ortiz (Spanish: ; born February 15, 1986) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played for the Cincinnati Reds from 2008 through 2015 and the Kansas City Royals in 2015. He was traded from the Reds to the Royals during the 2015 season, where he won the 2015 World Series over the New York Mets.
Cueto made his major league debut in 2008, delivering an outstanding performance, but struggling with consistency in his rookie year and 2009. By 2010 though, Cueto began to become a more consistent starting pitcher, and by 2011 he had emerged as the ace of the Reds pitching staff and one of the top pitchers in the National League. He won 19 games and posted a 2.78 ERA in 2012, finishing fourth in the voting for the National League Cy Young Award and helping lead the Reds to the NL Central title. In 2014, he won 20 games with a 2.25 ERA and tied for the NL lead in strikeouts with 242, finishing as the runner up for the Cy Young. In 2016, he won 18 games with the San Francisco Giants while posting a 2.79 ERA, helping lead them to the postseason, where they lost in the NLDS, and achieving another top 10 finish in the Cy Young voting. He was an MLB All-Star in 2014 and 2016, and was chosen as the starting pitcher for the 2016 MLB All-Star Game. From 2011 to 2017, Cueto accumulated the second lowest ERA of all pitchers with at least 750 innings pitched (behind Clayton Kershaw), managing a 2.94 ERA alongside a 90–51 (.638) record in 1,256 ⁄3 innings.