From the PD:
Why Corey Kluber isn’t done being Corey Kluber: ‘I would have expected myself to turn it around’ -- Doug Lesmerises
Updated Aug 14, 11:56 PM; Posted Aug 14, 7:50 AM
cleveland.com
Corey Kluber held a baseball camp for kids during his time on this injured list. Tuesday night, he was working his way back with a rehab start in Akron. (Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)
0 shares
By
Doug Lesmerises, cleveland.com
AKRON, Ohio -- Corey Kluber touched 93 Tuesday night. He also sat at 33.
The radar gun reading for the ace of the Cleveland Indians was the number of interest in his second rehab start on his way back to a pennant race, but the turn of the calendar might be in the back of your mind, too. Maybe because of the 5.80 ERA.
The last time Kluber came through Akron on a rehab start, also before a sellout crowd like Tuesday night, he was on his way to a Cy Young Award. In 2017, a lower back strain knocked Kluber out for a month. In six starts before his injury that season, he had an ERA of 5.06. After he returned, he had a 1.62 ERA in 23 starts.
Boy, does that guy know how to do a rehab.
This year, Kluber landed on the injured list at the same time, the start of May, but his absence will stretch close to four months instead of one. What’s similar is that he wasn’t great at the start of this season -- a 5.80 ERA in seven starts. What’s different is that the back was clearly bothering him in 2017, and the time away on the injured list fixed what ailed him. This time, a fluke knocked him out, a broken bone in his pitching arm off a batted ball.
What’s also different is that he’s two years older and not a ton of pitchers maintain a consistently high level of healthy production beyond age 33.
What’s the same is that he’s Corey Kluber.
I thought he looked good Tuesday night, with some sharp breaking balls and fastballs on the corner with movement among his six strikeouts. In his final inning in the fourth, he tried to finish one guy off with a high fastball at 91 on a two-strike pitch and it landed on the other side of the outfield wall. But while retiring the first 10 batters, he said it didn’t feel as weird as his first rehab start in Columbus -- he got into the flow sooner -- and he generally looked like a pitcher ready to help in a race sooner rather than later. Maybe one more tick upward with the fastball -- he hit 92 regularly and touched 93 a few times. But generally Kluberesque.
Which he believes he is. Because he’s Corey Kluber.
You or I might be tempted to describe it as “still Corey Kluber” but tying anything to the past isn’t how Kluber wins. His belief and plan at 33 is no different than it was at 27, in that of course it is different. My temptation is to tell you that Kluber will come back and pitch at a high level because the time off was a happy accident for him, and in the only other instance in his career when an injury knocked him out for any length of time, he returned as the best pitcher in the American League.
But Kluber doesn’t think the injury might have helped. He believes only in today, and the idea that he’s unlikely to string together six months of bad todays. I declared in the press box that Kluber was back after a beautiful fastball on the inside corner in the fourth inning. He allowed the homer two pitches later.
Kluber would stick more to the idea that he never left.
“I think regardless of whether I was injured or not, I would have expected myself to turn it around,” Kluber told me Tuesday night after throwing 60 pitches. "I wouldn’t have expected to keep pitching poorly even if I would have stayed healthy. I believe I would have been able to to turn things around.
"No pitcher that I ever talked to has gone through an entire season feeling great the whole time. Things get out of whack and part of a six-month season is trying to get out of those lulls and then riding out the highs as long as you can.
“I don’t know if I necessarily believe that the injury this year or that year was why I turned things around.”
Jose Ramirez couldn’t hit for two months and turned things around without an injury. Why? The best answer is probably something like, “because he’s Jose Ramirez.” Apply the same logic here. Kluber has never relied on pure power, so maintaining his status as one of the best pitchers in the game at age 33 and beyond is possible. Not because that’s typical, but because he’s elite.
This is a simple comparison, and the idea that most pitchers decline with age is obvious. But in the four seasons between 2015-18, pitchers 32 and younger had 60 seasons with 200 strikeouts. Pitchers 33 and older had eight seasons of 200 strikeouts, four by Justin Verlander.
Over the last 20 years, there have been 189 seasons of 200 strikeouts from pitchers 32 and younger. There have been 29 seasons of 200 strikeouts from pitchers 33 and older, and only six pitchers did it at least twice -- Randy Johnson (5), Verlander (4), Roger Clemens (3), Cliff Lee (2), Curt Schilling (2) and Roy Halladay (2). I gave Kluber a rough outline of some of those numbers and expressed the idea that it would make sense for him to join a group like that.
“To me, my age doesn’t affect the belief I have in myself,” Kluber said. “You have to go out there each day with what you have that day and you have to figure out a way to get the job done. Whether that’s a guy who’s 40 years old throwing 85 miles an hour, his job that day is to figure out a way to get the job done.”
Throwing 92 at age 33 is a long way from throwing 85 at 40. But my advice is to not let a bad April make you change how you view Kluber. Don’t go only by the context -- guy getting older has a rough start to the season. Go by the individual -- diligent professional attacks his job the same way.
The context matters some. In this case, the person matters more. Kluber is trying to make the best out of a bad break, but he would have done that anyway. He’s pitching differently now than he did when he won his first Cy Young at age 28, but he also pitches different on Sunday than he did on Tuesday.
“I don’t believe in comparing a season now to five years ago or seven years ago,” Kluber said. “There are so many things that are different. ... My stuff may not be as good as when I was 27, but I feel like I’m a more intelligent pitcher than when I was 27. I can work my way through a game better than I could then. There’s a give and take and I have more experience than when I was young, and that’s just the way it is."
Kluber never changes his preparation, but he always changes himself, and the result has been the same guy for five years. I don’t think that’s over. He won’t get to 200 strikeouts in his age 33 season, obviously. But he could pitch in September like a 200-strikeout guy, and he could get there at age 34 or 35.
You can view the previous five seasons -- 1,091 1/3 innings and 1,228 strikeouts -- as a burden or as proof. He’s done so much, how can he keep it up? He’s done so much, why wouldn’t he keep it up? Kluber views it as neither. He doesn’t view it all.
“I guess you can choose how to look at it,” Kluber said. “I can choose to say, I’ve done X,Y, Z and if things don’t go my way, I can fall back on that. Or I can choose to say I’ve done X, Y, Z but that doesn’t matter today.”
You don’t have to ignore it. He can choose to ignore it. The result should get fans and the pitcher to the same place.
He’s Corey Kluber -- still Kluber and always Kluber. Don’t give up on that yet.
