What is Corey Kluber’s Breaking Ball?
Don’t ask Corey Kluber if he throws a curveball or a slider. There’s only one response, and it will be so deadpan it’s almost a whisper on the wind: “Breaking ball.” Maybe it doesn’t matter, but maybe it does. But what is that breaking ball?
To refresh your memory:
You’re not going to work Kluber into a corner by asking him what pitch he started with, or if he thinks of it as a slider or a curve, or anything really. He willfully considers it an amorphous breaking pitch. “I don’t care to call it one thing or another. If I start calling it one thing or the other, I think I’d subconsciously try to make it look like I think that should look like it. It’s easier for me to call it a breaking ball and just throw it,” he told me.
If you try to classify it by movement, you’ll find it’s perfectly in between the slider and the curve. It drops more than a slider and less than a curve, at least.
| Horizontal | Vertical | Velocity | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kluber | 9.4 | -1.5 | 83.6 |
| League Slider | 2.8 | 1.2 | 84.3 |
| League Curve | 6.1 | -5.8 | 77.8 |
If you are tempted to call it a slider based on drop, though, consider this. No pitch in baseball has as much horizontal movement. The ones that do? They’re mostly curves.
| Pitcher | Pitch Type | Count | avg(PFx_x) | avg(PFx_z) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corey Kluber | CU | 548 | 10.5 | -2.8 |
| Jose Veras | CU | 224 | 10.2 | -5.2 |
| Charlie Morton | CU | 617 | 10.1 | -7.3 |
| Clay Buchholz | CU | 442 | 9.6 | -6.9 |
| Collin McHugh | CU | 579 | 9.5 | -8.9 |
| Jesse Chavez | CU | 333 | 9.5 | -7.3 |
| Yu Darvish | SL | 588 | 9.4 | -4.5 |
| Sonny Gray | CU | 907 | 9.3 | -5.6 |
| Ricky Nolasco | CU | 372 | 9.2 | -7.4 |
| Bryan Shaw | SL | 332 | 9.2 | -1.6 |
But Kluber wouldn’t call it a curve. “It’s never really been one of the other, it’s been pretty similar to how it looks now,” he told me before a game with the Athletics. “It’s never been a 12-to-6 curveball or a shorter slider.”
Run comps on the pitch to find the most comparable pitches by movement, like Jeff Sullivan did, and you’ll find that Yu Darvish slider, but also Jose Fernandez‘s curve, Marcus Stroman‘s curve and (sort of) Sonny Gray’s curve.
Still… let’s go to the grips. Maybe the grips will tell us something.
Top left is Kluber’s grip on his breaking ball. Next to his is Jake Arrieta‘s slider grip, and below the two are Jacob deGrom’s slider (left) and curve (right). There are all sorts of ways to hold a slider, at least in terms of depth into the hand, and you can see that deGrom’s (Warthen) slider is more in the fingers than Arrieta’s slider. But one thing you will find with most slider grips is that the pitcher will place two fingers along the seam. Kluber? That’s a curve grip, with the middle finger doing the heavy lifting on the seam there.
Maybe you’re leaning curve right now. Now it’s time to show the way in which Kluber’s breaking ball is most slider like: results. Especially swing and ground-ball rates. If I took the name off his pitch, you’d call it a slider.
| Swing Rate | Swinging Strike Rate | Ground-Ball Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kluber | 52% | 21% | 41% |
| League Slider | 47% | 14% | 44% |
| League Curve | 39% | 11% | 50% |
Without the big old hump associated with your traditional 12-to-6 curveball, maybe batters have less of a warning that something with curve-like horizontal movement is coming. So they swing at a fastball and find air instead.
And with ten inches of horizontal movement, you’re past the sort of movement that finds handle or the end of a bat instead of barrel — that’s enough horizontal movement to miss the bat completely. Usually horizontal movement is associated with good grounder rates, and vertical movement with good whiff rates — speaking generally — but there’s something so unique about Kluber’s breaking ball that it’s not surprising that it defies convention here again.
After all, we can’t even decide what to call it after rigorous investigation, so good luck trying to the other algorithms and humans trying to classify it. Years of tinkering by Corey Kluber — “Little bit of messing around with stuff — There wasn’t a big moment, I didn’t just grab the ball with my fingers on it” — has produced this excellent breaking ball that is gripped like a curveball, cuts like a curveball, sinks like a slider, and produces outcomes like a slider. “Breaking Ball” is right.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
This is a fabulous post. Great content that ESPN can’t touch even on their best days.
Thanks
Arrieta’s slider grip looks almost like a two-seamer grip. That’s really interesting.
Grip is overblown. For some guys it is very important but you can essentially throw whatever you want with any grip. Some grips are more effective however…
If someone asked me to explain your position on the importance of grips, I would not be able to.
Arrieta basically has a slutter.
Don’t talk about Brittany that way.
That’s a slightly offset 4 seam grip actually.
That is a slurve. Typically a slurve is regarded as a sloppy breaking ball, but this one is quite sharp. The simple way to answer this question is with your eyes – does it move more horizontally or vertically? If you put a gun to my head, I would call it a slider, but it has the qualities of both.
Isn’t a pitch somewhere between a slider and a curve usually just called a slurve?
Sure, but no pitch classification system has ‘slurve’ as an option, and it’s not even a great fit in that bucket. Slurve 78.5mph 5.3x 1.3z is the typical slurve according to this http://www.hardballtimes.com/platoon-splits-20/
A slurve is a pitch that comes out when a pitcher cannot throw a real curveball. By definition is somewhat of a CB/SL, but it has a very negative connotation to it. A couple of other power CB/SL in the Majors are Vic Black and Craig Kimbrel. Kimbrel’s is called a Knuckle CB which is a deceptive term, I think the correct term is a Spike CB.
It’s a bit like sub-genres of Metal I reckon. Some say it’s Doom Metal, others say it’s Black Metal. A few say it’s German-Industrial-Superimposed-Tin Can-Metal.
It’s Metal.
And Kluber, throws a breaking ball.
Corey Kluber’s breaking ball is the Pantera of pitches. It’s mean, from the south, and can’t be properly classified.
Nobody’s confusing doom and black metal. That’s not like slider vs. curve, it’s like eephus vs. fastball.
Kimbrel’s breaking ball was the first thing I thought of when I read this piece. He claims it’s a curveball but it doesn’t move like any curve I’ve ever seen.
It moves exactly like almost every curve you’ve ever seen:
Kimbrel: http://i.imgur.com/1Q21zvS.jpg
Verlander: http://i.imgur.com/UuSs21B.jpg
Maybe that one does, but a few things:
1) When it’s more traditional curve like, that’s not what he wants. Left on cutting room floor: “Sometimes I cast it and it gets big, but that’s not the shape I want.”
2) In aggregate, it’s like two curves and two sliders, all four of which are the best breaking balls in the game.
3) It looks like that, yes, but it also looks like this: http://www.pitcherlist.com/corey-klubers-slider-the-best-pitches-from-wednesdays-games/
or this http://i.imgur.com/UiU59iL.gif
I was just talking about Kimbrel. Part of my personal crusade to dispel the myth that he throws anything other than a pure hard curve. Whatever that thing Kluber is throwing is cool, though.
I misread your post sorry
Wouldn’t this be considered a “slurve?” A pitch that isn’t quite a slider and isn’t quite a curve.
You could be posting about Texiera’s big bounceback year and how he’s doing it, and yet you’re posting about what Corey Kluber’s breaking ball is?
Amazing. Slow clap for this one.
You’re taking requests for articles now, Eno? I’d like one about corked bats (and whether you think they’re destroying the integrity of the sport), one about Tulo, and your thoughts on the New Horizons Pluto fly by.
Wouldn’t this just be a 2 to 8 curveball? It has a huge hump like a curveball, only instead of up to down his hump is right to left. The speed is another tell for me. That pitch is 10 mph less than his fastball. I usually consider a pitch a slider when it’s between 5 and 9 mph slower than the fastball. Kluber’s fastball averages 93 mph, the gun in that gif shows 83 mph. 10mph difference or more for me means curve.
#PitchSeekingName
#KeepNotGraphs
I’m a little confused as to why you are saying that the horizantal movement indicates curve and vertical indicates slider. Curve balls are thrown with top spin and move downward, no?
His vertical is right in between slider and curve, so I’m just saying the vertical movement does not indicate anything. Curves sweep more than sliders, so the horizontal movement is more curve-like.
Read Cameron’s chat. When I say ‘sinks like a slider’ I mean ‘doesn’t sink as much as most curveballs, and instead sinks more like a slider, which sinks less.’
“Curves sweep more than sliders…”
What?! Is this true? I though curves were more like 12-6 meaning straight up and down and sliders had the big sweep? Is everything I’ve always thought wrong?
Curves just move more than sliders in general. Here are the average movement numbers http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-change-average-movement-for-each-pitch-type/
The pitch is almost Mariano Rivera ‘ish – happy accident. Great insight, Eno.
What qualifies a pitch as a curveball? I think of the prototypical curveball as the 12-to-6, which is mentioned a couple times in the article. Do the league average curveball stats take the 12-6 curves into account?
IMO, and to a degree, if the break is…
– Vertical = Curveball
– Tilted = Slider
– Horizontal = Cutter
Some will object and say, “What about Brad Lidge’s slider?” Well, he gripped it and it moved like a curveball (power curve). Like Lincecum’s power curve, Lidge’s slider was likely a curve thrown with fastball arm speed (but a funky grip).
I’d like to classify by spin angle relative to the pitcher’s arm slot. Might easily be 30-60 degrees off from absolute angle.
Great article, as usual, Eno!
It’s no secret that Kluber has been struggling on and off this year. I’d like to get your take on something I noticed in at least a couple of the blow-up starts he has had this year: this particular pitch (at least I think it is this pitch) has been either been ineffectively executed (wild pitch) or perhaps mishandled by the catcher (passed ball), in many cases leading directly or indirectly to runs. Thoughts?
Related to this, is there a way to look up runs allowed on wild pitches?
Thanks!
Arrieta’s grip is very similar to Blyleven’s (curveball).
Love this article, awesome Eno!
“‘Breaking Ball’ is right.”
Parsimony wins again.
The grip photos get me to thinking we need a piece on pitchers’ finger lengths. Are there any successful pitchers that don’t have long fingers and thumbs?
That pitch looks incredibly hard to hit.
Looks like he’s throwing a boomerang.
If only there was a way to name/classify a pitch that seems to be equal parts slider and curve? Hmmmm, if only….
Name yes, classify no. There are no ‘slurves’ on any leaderboards or databases I know of.
I know this pitch. It’s called “sex”.