The Red Sox haven’t gotten the Corey Kluber of yore and lore in 2023.
Through his first three starts of the season, the 37-year-old righty allowed 10 earned runs on 13 hits, including four home runs, walked six batters, and struck out 13.
His fourth start wasn’t an improvement. Over five innings, the veteran hurler allowed seven earned runs on six hits, walked two, struck out four, gave up two home runs, and hit two batters. He threw 103 pitches, 65 for strikes.
“It’s tough,” Alex Cora said after the 10-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins. “It’s actually the walks all that stuff that come before the big swings, right? When we pitch ahead in the first inning, we do a good job. When we’re behind, we’re getting crushed.”
Kluber issued a leadoff walk to Twins leadoff man Max Kepler and gave up a double to Byron Buxton before letting Edouard Julien take him yard. An immediate 3-0 hole for the home team. The starting rotation has an ERA over 11 in the first inning.
By the third inning, he’d issued two walks and hit two batters. A single straight up the middle by Edouard Julien made it 4-0, Joey Gallo’s home run over the bullpen in right field made it 7-0.
“His mechanics are always sound,” Cora said. “Throughout his career, he’s been to the edges but in the strike zone, and now, he’s just a little bit off the strike zone … I think at the end, he found a little bit of rhythm there, using his mix.”
Kluber did look better as the outing went on. He sat the Twins down 1-2-3 in the fourth, and pitched a scoreless fifth, but it was too late. The Red Sox are 0-4 in his starts, and he’s been charged with each loss.
“Ultimately, it boils down to not executing enough pitches,” Kluber said. “In general, just getting into too many extended at-bats, and then, when that happens and you miss your locations, chances are it’s not going in your favor.”
Plenty of power pitchers successfully remake themselves into finesse guys, also known as control pitchers, as they age. For years, Kluber was both.
Between 2014-18, he struck out 222+ batters and pitched at least 200 innings each season. Cumulatively, he posted a 2.85 ERA, 1.016 WHIP, struck out 28.5% of his batters, and walked a minuscule 1.8 BB9. His four-seam fastball was a formidable weapon, but he was also stingier with walks than anyone; to date, his 2.0 career BB9 leads active pitchers. He took home two Cy Young awards during those glory days.
These days, the four-seamer is his least-used pitch, and hasn’t averaged above 90 mph since 2020. His hardest pitches of the game were a pair of 89.3 mph sinkers in the first and second inning.
But a blazing fastball isn’t the only way to get outs, and sometimes, velocity can be too much of a good thing. Catcher Norm Sherry famously gave a young Dodgers teammate some invaluable advice: sacrifice a little speed to gain control. Sandy Koufax turned out alright.
Kluber entered this season as the active leader in walks-per-nine, a key indicator of finesse pitching, but he’s walked eight batters this year, at least one per start.
What gives?
“I don’t feel like the delivery is really out of whack,” Kluber said. “I think it’s probably, more than anything, adjusting my sights on where I’m starting pitches. If I’m missing that, I think it’s a matter of adjusting my sights and trying to corral it in to get back in the zone better. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of big misses where I’m missing drastically, I think a lot of it is kind of off the edges (of the zone).”
And Kluber wasn’t the only reason for the loss; Ryan Brasier has struggled to go from the second to third out without giving something up in between, and on Wednesday night, it was a three-run homer to Gallo. The lineup collected four runs on seven hits (including Enmanuel Valdez’s collecting hits in the first two at-bats of his major league career, and Kiké Hernández hitting his third home run of the season and 100th of his career) but also left six men on base. The Twins gave them opportunities, including bases-loaded in the bottom of the ninth, but they couldn’t capitalize.
The Red Sox already have seven come-from-behind wins this year. In Tuesday night’s series opener, they won their third game in which they trailed after the seventh inning, a kind of victory they only had four times last season. This team has been able to overcome frequent, giant deficits several times already, but it’s impossible to expect them to sustain that kind of run production on a nightly basis. Moreover, they shouldn’t have to.
Kluber has allowed four or more runs in three of four starts this year. It’s a small, early sample size, but it’s not encouraging. An early 7-0 hole is deflating; no wonder they fell flat.