He won 18 games for San Francisco in 2016 and started the All-S

SCOTTSDALE Adam Ottavino Jersey , Ariz. (AP) — For nearly three years, Johnny Cueto pitched with a stabbing pain in his right elbow. tar game that year dealing with the discomfort.How he did so, Cueto isn’t sure. And the animated right-hander can now envision how great it will be once he’s back on the mound and pain-free following Tommy John reconstructive surgery.“It was a lot for me to deal with. It was almost three years with pain in the elbow, and strong pain,” said Cueto, who turns 33 on Friday. “It’s not easy. Last year I started well, but it’s a mental pain, it’s a pain that felt like someone stuck a knife in my elbow and stabbed it over and over again. It was unbearable and I don’t know how I was able to pitch and block the pain.”Cueto arrived in Arizona a couple of days behind the Giants pitchers and catchers because of personal reasons and had his physical Thursday. He is scheduled to throw next week for the first time since his August operation.The Giants’ rotation was plagued by injuries for a second straight year in 2018 with Cueto, ace lefty Madison Bumgarner and right-hander Jeff Samardzija all missing significant time.Cueto is down about 20 pounds to 226 thanks to regular meals of salad and fish. Yet he expects to be back at 230 or more once he’s ready to return — hopefully before season’s end around Sept. 1, to which Cueto noted, “If that’s the case I’ll be very happy.”“We would love to see Johnny start. That means we probably are sitting in a pretty good position,” manager Bruce Bochy said Thursday following a successful workout after one rainstorm, before it began pouring again. “But we’re not going to do something that doesn’t make sense with our medical staff and where he’s at. Because you get through that then you have another offseason to really heal up. We’ll see where he’s at when we get to August.”Cueto acknowledged he will let the experts guide him when it comes to a timeline and taking each important step along the way to come back.“Right now I feel like I’m ready but I know I’m not,” he said. “My frustration was at the beginning when I couldn’t move the arm to take a shower, but right now I feel normal and like any other pitcher. I know what my problem is. The only thing I have to do is take it easy and continue with my rehab.”He begins the fourth season of a $130 million, six-year contract he signed before the 2016 season.Cueto did his offseason rehab back home in the Dominican Republic, where one of his half-dozen horses, Popeye, just died.He made 25 starts in 2017 then just nine with 53 innings last year before surgery. On Friday, he plans to throw a plastic ball against a trampoline-like screen.When appropriate, he will embrace the chance to mentor the young pitchers, particularly those from Latin America who look up to Cueto’s example in training and his accomplishments on the mound.“I feel really good. I’m working out and conditioning http://www.rockiesfanproshop.com/authentic-pat-valaika-jersey ,” Cueto said. “I’m working hard to return strong to help my team. … I just want to make sure that my rehab is coming along well, that’s my main concern right now.” ATLANTA (AP) — Baseball owners have locked down their commissioner and their main broadcast partner, too.Any decisions on speeding up the game and perhaps making it more enjoyable to watch will have to wait.After wrapping up two days of meetings at a hotel next to the Atlanta Braves‘ SunTrust Park, the owners announced a new contract for Commissioner Rob Manfred, keeping him on the job at least through the 2024 regular season. The 60-year-old started a five-year term in January 2015.“It seems like about 15 minutes ago I was spending a really dreadful day in a not-very-nice hotel suite in Baltimore waiting to see if I could get vote number — what was I looking for, 23 right?” quipped Manfred, who won the vote to succeed Bud Selig in August 2014 after beating out two other contenders. “It seems almost impossible that four years have gone by.”The owners also signed off on a new television deal with Fox, which still has three seasons to go on its current eight-year contract that pays baseball an average of $525 million per season.The seven-year extension, which runs through 2028, will be worth just over $5 billion to MLB — roughly a 36 percent increase to an average of about $715 million per season.Manfred was asked whether the owners had any reservations to making such a long-term commitment, especially giving the rapidly changing dynamics of the broadcast and online industries.“I’m a huge believer in the idea that when you have a good partner, even when you’re looking at an uncertain landscape, that good partners find a way to navigate that uncertain landscape,” the commissioner said.The relationship with Fox, which began in 1996, will continue to include the World Series and All-Star Game, as well as extensive playoff coverage on both the network and its all-sports cable channel, FS1.The new agreement also commits Fox to showing more games from the League Championship Series on its main network, beginning in 2019. It was criticized for televising all but Game 2 in this year’s seven-game NLCS between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers on FS1, which has a narrower distribution. Starting next year, two of the first four games and Game 7 will be on Fox.In addition to the extension with Fox, MLB also approved a $300 million Daniel Castro Jersey , three-year with DAZN, a subscription video streaming service run by former ESPN president John Skipper. Manfred called it a key part of baseball’s strategy to reach a new generation of fans.DAZN will co-produce a nightly highlight show at the MLB Network in Secaucus, New Jersey, and do live cut-ins to games Monday through Friday, an arrangement that steers clear of national broadcast slots held by Fox and ESPN on the weekend.“The owners have shown courage, because we are new,” Skipper said. “We will make sure that young fans have a whip-around show (similar to NFL’s Red Zone) that shows every home run, every highlight. We will get them interested in the game.”While the deals with Manfred, Fox and DAZN were expected , baseball has yet to come to a consensus on the best ways to improve a sport that suffered a 4 percent dip in attendance this season to 69.6 million, plunging to its lowest level since 2003.Manfred and the owners continue to look at ways to speed play . Nine-inning games averaged 3 hours, 4 minutes in 2018. While that was 4 minutes lower than the previous season, it still matched the third-highest average in baseball history.Baseball’s style of play is also under scrutiny as teams have increasingly become reliant on a home run-or-bust offensive strategy to beat defensive shifts and reliever-heavy pitching staffs that are able to mix and match for almost any situation.Tampa Bay , most notably, even began using relievers to start games, only expecting to get an inning or two out of them before beginning a series of changes. While baseball set a record for homers in 2017 and stayed close to a record level this year, it also had more strikeouts than hits for the first time in 2018 as the cumulative batting average dipped to .248 — the lowest since 1972, the year before the designated hitter was introduced in the American League.Chris Marinak, MLB’s executive vice president for strategy, technology and innovation, provided owners with a report on those issues. Manfred refused to go into details, saying he preferred to reach a consensus with the players’ union. That includes any decision on a pitch clock ttp://www.rockiesfanproshop.com/authentic-tony-wolters-jersey , which the owners have the right to impose without union approval under the labor agreement.Manfred and Tony Clark, head of the MLB Players Association, have been exchanging dates to discuss possible improvements, though the commissioner stressed that no major changes are expected.“The owners are realistic about how the business performed,” Manfred said. “The focus of the conversation, however, was to make sure we do everything we can to get as many fans in the ballpark in 2019 as we possibly can. We do think we have some good ideas we’ll be rolling out in the next few months.”Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner stressed that baseball merely needs some minor tweaking, not a massive overhaul.“There are reasons the game had changed,” Steinbrenner said. “I don’t see those changes reverting because, quite frankly, I think those are good changes. There’s only so much we’re going to be able to do. But we have to continue to try to do everything we can. It’s not something we can ignore.”Manfred said MLB is expected to announce a host for the 2021 All-Star Game sometimes early next year. He acknowledged that SunTrust Park is one of the contenders.The owners got a tour of the 2-year-old stadium, notable for the adjacent mixed-use development that is also controlled by the Braves. It includes restaurants, bars, retail shops, apartments, an office tower as well as the hotel where the meetings were held.Atlanta has hosted two previous All-Star Games, most recently in 2000 at its previous home, Turner Field.