At the end of last season, most Cleveland Indians fans probably thought they had a decent middle-of-the-rotation type starter on their hands with Corey Kluber. He posted a 3.85 ERA and had a WAR of 2.8 to go along with a 22.4% strikeout rate and 5.4% walk rate. These numbers gave him a 99 ERA- and 86 FIP-. So by most metrics, he was roughly a league average starter in 2013. However, in 2014 he has upped his strikeout percentage to 27.3% and lowered his HR/FB % from 12.4% to 6.9% which has dropped his FIP to 2.44, giving him an FIP- of 66. In 2014, Kluber has been 34% better than average by FIP and has been worth 5.8 Wins Above Replacement, which is good for 3rd in the MLB, trailing only Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw; quite the improvement.
But the question needs to be asked: what’s behind his rapid improvement?
In 2013, Kluber threw his sinker about half the time and supplemented that with a cutter, slider, and change-up. He used the changeup almost exclusively on lefties (16% of pitches vs 2% of pitches against righties), and used his slider more frequently against RHH than LHH (18% vs 10%). His sinker induced a lot of grounders and not a lot of swings and misses. Over 20% of his sinkers were put in play, and half of those ended up on the ground. Grounders do seem like a favorable outcome considering they are the batted ball type that incur the least damage (excluding pop-ups). However, hitters hit .344 with a .548 slugging percentage off of Kluber’s sinker in 2013. So clearly, they were not exactly slow rollers that go for easy outs.
This season, he has still used his sinker about half the time, and has not gotten drastically different results. Opposing hitters are hitting .324 with a .468 slugging percentage this year. Yes, hitters are worse against the sinker this year, but not drastically so.
A change is noticed in the usage of his slider this season though. Last year he threw it only 10% of the time to LHH, but this year he is throwing it 16% to both righties and lefties. Last year, he threw the slider to lefties primarily in 2-strike counts, but hitters had a .539 BABIP in those situations. Not a great number in any count, let alone with two strikes. This year, of the 257 sliders he’s thrown to lefties, 153 of them have been in two-strike counts, and he has had much more success this year. Left-handed hitters are hitting a Kershaw-ian .086 with an ISO of .025 off of Kluber’s two-strike sliders. Why has he had more success with his slider this year?
In 2013, he threw his slider at an average speed of 83.9 mph. So far in 2014, he has upped that to 84.1 mph. Faster, yes, but only insignificantly so. The real difference comes in the movement. According to Brooksbaseball.net, his slider had 9.3 inches of horizontal movement and -.69 inches of vertical movement in 2013. Those numbers have changed to 10.2 inches and -2.4 inches, respectively, in 2014. Over the course of the offseason, he gained over 1.5 inches of vertical movement. In fact, in April through May of 2014 Kluber averaged -3.3 inches of vertical movement.
How has he gotten more vertical movement? This I am unsure about, but he may have slightly changed his arm angle.
The vertical release point of his pitches increased at the start of this season back near their 2012 levels. However, in 2012, he was generating even less vertical movement on his slider than in 2013. Kluber has also presumably been moving around on the rubber, moving more and more towards third base.
This may explain more of the horizontal movement on his sliders, but probably not does not directly affect the vertical movement.
Additionally, Kluber has had increased success in locating his pitches this season compared to years past. In 2013, he tried to work low and away, but he was not always successful as a lot of his pitches were left over the plate.
He pounded the bottom of the zone, but let too many pitches cross over the heart of the plate. In 2014, Kluber has still tried to hit the low-and-away part of the strike zone, but has had much more success in doing so.
He is leaving fewer pitches at waist height and is succeeding at keeping the ball down more, something that is crucial for a sinkerball pitcher like Kluber.
Corey Kluber has definitely pitched like a star this year and deserves praise for the Indians’ go-to guy at the front of their rotation. However, can we expect his success to continue? If we look back at his slider movement, we can see that the vertical movement that changed so drastically over this past offseason has begun to revert back to its 2013 ways.
However, his performance in his last few starts hasn’t been drastically out of character. Kluber also is not simply just getting lucky like what happens to a lot of players during fluke seasons. He has allowed a .311 BABIP, which is about league average, and even his xFIP, which replaces his home run rate with the league average rate, is 2.75; good for 5th in all of baseball. Finally, Kluber is 28 years old, so he may very well have reached his natural physical peak as a pitcher. But for Indians fans, and all baseball fans, I hope Corey Kluber continues to pitch like a Cy Young candidate for years to come.
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