KC Royals: Evaluating Division Rival Cleveland Indians
By David Hart
Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Corey Kluber (28) – Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
It has been pretty well known around the league, that early in Kluber’s career he began to use his four-seam fastball sparingly. Something happened in this past off-season though, and now he is getting different linear movement on both of his fast balls. Kluber has also started throwing his four-seam fastball almost 10X as much.
Apparently winning a Cy Young award in 2014 wasn’t enough for Kluber. He found room for improvement, much to the dismay of Royals fans everywhere.
According to BrooksBaseball, during 2013-2014 seasons Kluber threw his four-seam on average 3.74% and had 3.34 inches of horizontal movement with 9.13 inches of vertical movement. Over this time period he also used his two-seam fastball (sinker) almost 50% of the time averaging 7.55 inches of horizontal movement and 6.52 inches of vertical movement.
Kluber was also pretty consistent with using the two-seam fastball on the first pitch 56-60% of the time for left and right-handed hitters. This was pre-Cy Young award behavior though.
Kluber’s two-seam is rarely used on the first pitch for right handed hitters, and the cutter and four-seam are making up almost 70-80% of his first pitches for each type of hitter.
Next: More on Corey Kluber