FedEx man delivers: Jose Cuas makes MLB debut
Five years ago, Jose Cuas almost gave up on baseball, taking a job at Federal Express. On Tuesday night, he made his MLB debut for the Kansas City Royals.
The Milwaukee Brewers saw something in the University of Maryland infielder. They took him in the 11th round of the 2015 draft. But it wasn’t long before they decided that the strong-armed third baseman belonged on the mound and they tried to convert him into a relief pitcher. When he struggled with the transition, the Brewers let him go.
Jose signed with the Long Island Ducks and took a day job delivering packages in Brooklyn for FedEx to pay the bills. His brother, Alex, himself a former Towson University pitcher, worked with Jose in the evenings, playing catch in a dimly lit field.
One day, while warming up for a Ducks game, six-time All Star closing pitcher Francisco Rodriguez saw him throw sidearm and suggested that he continue to work on that, Cuas’ more natural delivery point.
“Hitters were uncomfortable,” recalls Alex. “If they’re looking like that, we got something. He only threw a fastball. Once that was good enough, we needed something to strike people out with. And then just the development of pitching. He started from nothing, and he was in-season. It was brand new.”
Then Jose got a second bite at the apple when he was signed with the Diamondbacks shortly before covid hit. When the pandemic-shortened season led them to cut him, he felt that he was done with baseball for good.
But his partner, Anais Peña, wouldn’t let him. She was expecting their second child at the time, and raising their young son. “I told him, ‘Don’t you dare do that. You are not going to quit. We did not sacrifice all this for you to quit.”
Getting a third chance in Major League Baseball is more rare than getting struck by lightning. But the Kansas City Royals coach Tony Peña Jr. saw Jose throw in the Dominican Winter League and signed him. After blazing his way through Double-A, he moved up to Triple-A for this season. His 1.74 ERA in 20 and 2/3 innings meant that he got the call that he had been waiting for all his life. He was going to the Show.
Sitting in the bullpen for the Royals road game in Cleveland, Jose heard his name called to warm up in the third inning. Two frames later, Jose Cuas, the Dominican FedEx delivery man in Brooklyn, the former infielder who couldn’t make the transition to pitching, stepped onto the rubber at Progressive Field and became a Major League Baseball pitcher.
He struck out Oscar Mercado and his first batter faced in the bigs earned him his first K. With two quick groundouts following, Cuas’ first outing ended 1-2-3.
“It’s a dream come true, being a kid from New York, everything I’ve been through in my playing career, to be here in a Major League stadium with a chance to pitch, I can’t even say I dreamed about it,” said Cuas. “It’s beyond my dreams.”
The Royals wound up losing the game 8-3 and Cuas’ debut was only the one inning, but that is of no importance to his family. Anais and Alex are convinced that everything was worth it to achieve Jose’s dream. He is now a major league pitcher. And whether it lasts a year or a decade, nobody can take that away from him.