FG On Fox: Finding a Comparison for Corey Kluber’s Breaking Ball
If you check out the FanGraphs leaderboard of the best pitchers so far, you’ve got a lot of awfully familiar names. Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw are obvious. Chris Sale? Jon Lester? No shock. The guy that stands out — the guy currently in third place in Wins Above Replacement — is Corey Kluber.
People are gradually coming to terms with the reality of Kluber being a rotation ace, but there’s still the question of how. It’s uncommon to have an ace come completely out of nowhere, and a few years ago Kluber was a little-thought-of trade return for Ryan Ludwick. Even the Indians couldn’t have seen all this coming.
The Corey Kluber story is complicated, as all of them are. He’s extremely dedicated and focused off the field. He’s changed the fastball that he throws. He’s made all kinds of little tweaks and adjustments, and he’s benefiting now from just having gotten an opportunity in the majors. But there is this one little signature of his that’s never been as good as it is today. Recently, Baseball America polled big-league managers on the best tools in the league. One of the prompts concerned the owner of the best curveball in the American League. Justin Verlander came in third, and, yeah, his curveball is really good. Dellin Betances came in first, and he’s really gotten comfortable in the bullpen. Corey Kluber came in second. That is, according to people who coach at the highest level, Kluber has one of baseball’s true elite curveballs.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
I can’t help noticing Fredi Gonzalez was voted the third-best manager. Perhaps managers are better at assessing players than they are at assessing themselves.
“In that same Baseball America poll, Darvish was credited with having the AL’s best slider, and Fernandez was credited with having the NL’s third-best slider, behind Kershaw and a reliever.”
Must this reliever’s name remain a mystery?
There’s a link to the poll in the article, brosopher.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/2014-major-league-best-tools/
Also, it’s exactly who you would guess if you had to guess.
Not really, since it’s a reliever that doesn’t throw a slider
C’mon, you can’t expect managers to know THAT. They’re just saying that he’s really good, hence all of his pitches–even the ones he doesn’t actually throw–are the best pitches.
Does Jeff have a secret clone that allows him to write o many articles
Jake Westbrook, not Ryan Ludwick, was the price paid for Corey Kluber.
Yeah, for some reason I wrote that bit from the Padres’ side. I don’t know.
A minor correction. While Kluber was acquired in a trade involving Ryan Ludwick, he was not, from the Indians point of view, the return for Ludwick as it was a three team trade with the Indians giving up Jake Westbrook (to the Cards), not Ryan Ludwick.
Also, I’ve been conditioned well. Each time I read “The Corey Kluber” I just assumed it would be followed by “Society” which resulted in some strange sentences the first time I read them.
I hate that I can’t edit this
Bryan Shaw’s breaking pitch looks very similar to Kluber’s.