2019 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Corey Kluber

In 2014, Corey Kluber went 18-9 with a 2.44 ERA across 235.2 innings. The following year, he went 9-16 with a 3.49 ERA (2.97 FIP) across 222 innings. Other than that 2015 season where things just didn’t quite work out for the star right-hander, Kluber has been one of the most reliable pitchers in fantasy baseball. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that Kluber has been the best pitcher in baseball over the past two or three seasons.

He’s thrown 200 or more innings in five straight seasons, winning at least 18 games in all but one of those seasons (2015). He’s posted a sub-3.00 ERA in three of the past five seasons, while striking out more than one batter per inning in each of the last five years.

The best ability is availability and when it is Kluber’s turn to toe the rubber, he’s out there for his squad. Kluber has made 29 or more starts in each of the past five seasons, serving time on the disabled list just twice in his career (2013, 2017). Additionally, Kluber has ranked top five in baseball in innings pitched in each season since 2013.

It’s hard to mention a sentence when talking about Kluber without the words reliable, durable and consistent. Not only does he rarely land on the disabled list, but what he has done over the past few years is nothing short of exceptional. Here are Kluber’s ranks among starters in all of baseball since the start of the 2015 season:

What exactly makes Corey Kluber so dominant on the mound? Does he throw 100 miles per hour? Nope. Does he have a curveball like Clayton Kershaw where the bottoms falls off? Not quite to that extent. The key for Kluber is his repertoire and how he keeps the opposition off balance. He throws three pitches each nearly 25-percent of the time, and then mixes in another pitch or two. Over the past three years, he’s used a sinker (32.05%), cutter (25.94%), slider (23.06%), four-seam fastball (13.11%), and a changeup (5.83%). While primarily being a three-pitch pitcher, he does have a straighter four-seam and a changeup he can mix in when duty calls.

Kluber doesn’t have any split disadvantages, and his arsenal allows him to have success against lefties and righties. He can pound lefties with a sinking fastball (arm-side movement) to keep them off the plate, and then his back foot slider gets lefties swinging over top of it every single time. If you watch Kluber against lefties, you can see this sequence in full effect, and he’s mastered the craft of that back foot slider. When facing lefties, his three most-used pitches are the sinking fastball, cutter and slider. Since the start of the 2016 season, lefties have struggled against the slider and cutter in particular, posting batting averages of .121 and .239 against those pitches respectively.

Against righties, Kluber employs the same three pitches with regularity, but the thought process behind these pitches is somewhat different. He rarely uses his changeup against righties, but he can use his sinking fastball to get in on the hands of right-handed hitters, while his slider has batters flailing like those giant dancing decorations you see outside of a car dealership.

Lastly, since the start of the 2016 season, opposing batters are hitting .250 or less against four of Kluber’s five pitches.

Steamer projects some regression in his 33-year-old season, as their projection model has Kluber going 14-9 with a 3.46 ERA and 1.12 WHIP across 209 innings. Kluber will best each of those numbers in 2019. The risk with Kluber is lower than other pitches, as there is nothing on the mound he does that isn’t repeatable or particularly worrisome in terms of fading away at this point of his career. He beats the opposition with command, a diverse arsenal and excellent movement on his pitches.

At the time of this writing, he was the fifth starting pitcher off the board, just behind Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola and a spot ahead of Houston’s Justin Verlander . Cleveland’s offense has taken a slight hit with the departure of some key offensive pieces, but Kluber doesn’t need a dominant offense to rack up the wins.

Feel comfortable drafting him in the second round to lead your staff, as reliability, durability and consistency on the mound is a sacred treasure in the current fantasy baseball landscape.

Statistical Credits
Fangraphs.com
BrooksBaseball.net