2020 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Corey Kluber

Fracture in throwing arm. Oblique injury on the road to recovery. A whopping 5.80 ERA prior to a lengthy stay on the injured list. The 2019 season was truly one to forget for former Cleveland Indian, now Texas Ranger Corey Kluber . He logged just 35.2 innings before a line drive from Miami’s Brian Anderson drilled Kluber directly on his right forearm. That sent him to the injured list, and then to make matters worse on the road to recovery, he hurt his oblique and that was all she wrote. It was a rather sad swan song for Kluber, who really was a force to be reckoned with for the majority of his career in Cleveland. He’ll head to Texas, which leans more towards hitters than pitchers, but long story short is that I’m not too worried about Kluber in 2020.

Last year, batters hit .293 against him, and his 1.65 WHIP was the worst mark he posted since his rookie season. He allowed a career-high fly ball rate, but home runs didn’t really do him in as much as one might expect. Now, his line drive rate allowed was his highest since 2013, while his ground ball rate was the lowest mark he posted since 2011.

Yes, the results weren’t great, but we didn’t allow Kluber to get into his zone. Typically, Kluber doesn’t heat up until the summer months, or perhaps after he gets injured early in the year and then returns. In the last four years in particular, Kluber’s ERA in the early months is almost routinely above 4.00. However, as the temperature increases, his ERA decreases.

Courtesy of FanGraphs

Furthermore, take a look at his career ERA by month. He’s an absolute beast in the summer months, and it’s been a yearly thing for him.

Courtesy of FanGraphs

Thanks, Brian Anderson ! You didn’t even let Kluber get into the zone! Regardless, when you take a look at some of his batted ball metrics, courtesy of Baseball Savant, the marks weren’t too far off from previous seasons, other than elevated barrel rate and slightly higher launch angle. The results were worse, but in time, I do believe it would have evened itself out.

Courtesy of Baseball Savant

I want to mention three quick things about Kluber’s pitches from last year.

1. His sinker didn’t induce ground balls like it has before. His cutter has a career ground ball rate of 48.2 percent and was over 52 percent in 2017 and 2018. It was a career low 41.7 percent in 2019.
2. His slider is still elite, ladies and gents. While his marks were below his career averages, the 46 percent O-Swing% and 19.3 percent SwStr% are solid. The only worrisome aspect about his slider was that the opposition put the bat on the ball more frequently. A 65.4 percent contact rate against his slider in 2019 was the highest of his career.
3. His cutter is solid as well, and in fact, it’s Z-Contact % (81.1%) and overall contact rate (70.1 percent) were actually the second and fourth-lowest marks of his entire career.

Kluber is a slow starter and the shortened 2020 season can be viewed two ways:

1. Early season struggles parlay and he doesn’t get filthy until he’s thrown some innings and adopted some sort of rhythm, OR
2. We’re skipping right to the warmer months and Kluber is at his best when the sun is shining bright.

Even as the 24th starter off the board and heading to a hitter’s park, I love the value on him as your SP3 this year. In the two thought processes above, I’m leaning towards the latter, and you should be able to get him after his average draft position. Due to the injury last year and flashier names being drafted after him (Mike Soroka , Sonny Gray , Jesús Luzardo ) he should slip a bit. Capitalize on the value and don’t look back. Will he return to ace form? Probably not, but even a step below the status quo of the past few years is a sizable return on your investment. To say the least, the amount of shares I will personally have in Kluber is rather high.

Statistical Credits:
fangraphs.com
baseballsavant.mlb.com
nfc.shgn.com/adp/baseball