Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 677: Pulling Corey Kluber

Episode Date: May 14, 2015

Ben and Sam answer discuss the Indians’ decision to remove Corey Kluber with a 21-strikeout start on the line.

Hey, I want to hook you, hook you with you. I want to hook you, hook you with you. They take your pants for money or name. But the song still remains the same. I want to hook you, hook you with you. I wanna hook you, work you with you what have you to say for yourself uh how are you ben all right good what the heck with the cory kluber that's today's topic all right anything before we talk about that nah all right well so in the grand tradition of improbable things happening shortly after we talk about them. Yesterday we talked about why there aren't more high strikeout games. We were answering a listener email about the Michael Pineda

16 strikeout game, which was unusual enough. And tonight, Wednesday night, Corey Kluber struck out 18 Cardinals. It was one of the more impressive starts ever. Is that too much to say? It's by game score the best eight-inning start ever, and game score is weird. We need something better than game score. Even if game score is perfect, limiting it to eight-inning starts

rules out pretty much any start, right? Because nobody's getting pulled after eight innings. Throughout baseball history, nobody gets pulled after eight innings of a start that's that good. I mean, that's the thing that's so weird about it, is that even if he only had, say, 16 strikeouts and there was no record available, nobody gets pulled there.

Like 113 pitches throwing a one-hit shutout, you're the ace of the staff, you're the horse, you're the guy who gets the shutouts. 113 pitches, you go out there, you at least get a base runner. So even without the record, it's sort of surprising that he got pulled. So that 8 thing, you just cheated with that filter. That's why all fun factor lines. Yeah, well, not my, it wasn't my find, but yes.

So he goes 8, he went 6 and 2 thirds hitless, and then there was a Johnny Peralta grounder kind of up the middle. Wasn't particularly hard hit. That was the only hit he allowed. He didn't walk anyone. Struck out 18. Did hit a batter. My guess is that that game score whatever was probably using a game score equation

or formula that doesn't count hit batsmen but i always manually adjust for hit batsmen that makes sense and it was it was dominant it was if you watch it you can go to mlb.com and they cut together all 18 strikeouts and you can watch them and some of them are nasty strikeouts i mean maybe most of them there are there are a couple like the ninth strikeout to peralta i think it was and the 15th maybe to melina it was it was quite a show and most of those do you know how many were swinging most of those strikeouts were swinging he was not like getting tons of calls on the outside corner or anything, at least on the third strike. He was missing that.

I want to say that they said that five were called. Yeah, it was very impressive. And so he was pulled, and the Cardinals are a tough team to strike out, too. They were one of the hardest teams to strike out last year. They're one of the hardest teams to strike out this year. It was really impressive. And Corey Kluber came into the game with the biggest ERA minus FIP gap of any starter with 40 innings pitched, but it was almost two runs. But the really depressing thing for the Indians is that the ERA minus FIP gap for their entire rotation

was actually bigger than that coming into this into this game it was like 1.96 runs which is insane but that is how bad the Indians defense has been so wait so Kluber had one of the biggest gaps in the league and the other four guys cumulatively had a bigger gap yes they didn't all have the 40 inning minimum, but collectively, yes, they had bigger gaps. So the entire Indians rotation had a pretty good FIP and a pretty bad ERA, like a two run gap between them coming into this. And that's because the Indians defensive efficiency was 0.654 or 65.4, however you want to say it.

was 0.654 or 65.4 however you want to say it they recorded outs on 65.4 percent of balls in play which would be the worst ever if if it were sustained over a full season it won't be but the 2007 devil rays were the worst ever and they were like 66.8 or something like that 66.9 so so thus far the indians have been fielding like the worst fielding team since 1950 or worse and that's how you end up with a gigantic era minus fib gap and so kluber has figured out how to solve that problem just strike out everyone and then you don't have to count on the indians defense so yeah although in fact his era minus fit yeah he had an era minus fit gap in this as well because i believe he had a negative fit today uh-huh i i believe right he must have yeah yeah he had like a negative 1.3 ish fitIP. And so, in fact... Yeah, he lowered both of them.

I don't know that he shrank the gap that much. Yeah, I'm not sure he shrank the gap at all. Yeah, so that's scary if you're an Indians fan. You're aware of it if you're an Indians fan. So all they have to do is just strike out double-digit guys every game, and they'll be fine. Which, to be fair, Danny Salazar might actually do. But that is not the central issue here. The central issue is the hook and to hook or not to hook.

And complicating matters slightly is that Terry Francona was ejected in the fourth inning for arguing with an umpire. And so we don't know who to assign responsibility for the hook to. Brad Mills, the bench coach, was the acting manager. So he at least went through the motions of doing it. I don't know whether Francona was calling the shots or not from the clubhouse, but in his post-game comments, he at least supported the move. He talked about how, you know, it's a 2-0 game, and you can't afford to be a fan, and you don't want Kluber to go out there and put a guy on, and then you've got some traffic on the base paths,

and then you have to bring in Cody Allen, who has been quite shaky this year. You want him to have a clean inning. That is part of the rationale. So that's the decision. It's a 2-0 game. So disingenuous. Well, what is the disingenuous?

What is the real reason? Well, no, the disingenuousness is that if he hadn't allowed a hit, he would have gone back out there. They would have left him out there to complete the no-hitter. They would have let him throw 145 pitches in a 1-0 game if he had a no-hitter going. I don't know about 145. Remember, they took out a guy who was pitching a...

Bauer. Bauer. No, but Bauer had thrown 110 through six innings or something absurd. Yeah. Kluber had thrown 113 through eight, and Kluber's 29. And, I mean, that's... Yeah, Bauer's 24. That's not insignificant to the equation either.

But, I mean, the main thing with Bauer is that there was no way bauer was gonna make it like he had no chance it was clear from the fourth inning on that he had no chance and the other thing with bauer he'd thrown 111 through six so there was zero chance he was gonna make through but the other thing is that was his first start of the year and kluber it's mid-may for kluber yeah right so we did a lightning round about this at Grantland, just a bunch of people chimed in, and that you can probably go read that now if you're listening to this on Thursday. And that kind of, there were various perspectives. Some of it was just about how great Cooper was, some of it was about the Indians and their defense and everything. kuber was some of it was about the indians and their defense and everything and a lot of it just devolved into a pitch count discussion and i did a little bit about that and ranny chimed in and of course ranny was one of the real pioneers of the pitch count limiting movement in the in the late 90s at bp wrote wrote the seminal piece yeah introducing pitcher abuse points which he linked to in his lightning round contribution and and he basically said that he never dreamed that it would go this

far and that it has gone too far and I'm you know that was my initial inclination I'm kind of I'm looking at it and the evidence for a really recent decline in pitch counts is not kind of mixed. Like I looked, you know, the most the highest number of pitches anyone has thrown this year is 125. Johnny Cueto through 125 on April 22nd. And I think Johnny Cueto has the next highest to like 123 or something. as the next highest to like 123 or something. And last year through the same date, and I know the season started earlier last year,

but through the same date, six guys had thrown at least 125. Five guys had thrown more than 125. And I'm not sure that was typical. Like I looked at a year or two before and it was like like you know maybe three or four guys but more than one guy and I don't know whether that is a sign of things moving even further like if you look at the average pitch count per start it hasn't really changed much lately. Like last year, it was 95.8. And in 2009, it was 95.3. And in 2004, it was I think 94.9. It's actually gone up possibly. And of course, the offensive environment

has totally changed in that time too. So that is probably influencing it somewhat. You're,'re you know fewer guys are getting on base you're not facing as many batters to get through innings so that's part of it too so it's kind of hard to adjust but it's not like there's i don't think been an enormous change just in the it's you know too soon to say that like we've reached a whole nother gear with pitch count limiting lately or in this season or something but this is i mean you're right the it is baffling that the no hitter is still given such leeway such respect such awe that if this had been a no-hitter, if that ground ball from Peralta had been a couple steps to the left, then they probably would have left Kluber in. But the much more impressive record of 21 strikeouts, which was in play,

he could have broken the record for strikeouts in a 9-inning game. He could have certainly tied it. And this, I mean, on its own, this was the first 18 strikeout game since 2004, since Ben Sheets did it. First one in the AL since Roger Clemens did it in 1998. So that alone was impressive, but he had a legitimate shot.

Who was coming up in that inning? I don't know who was coming up in that inning. Well, it was the, I think it was the 9-1-2 hitters because I think Mark Reynolds was the last person he faced. Okay. Well, he had a legitimate shot. It would have been the most exciting half inning of the season so far. I left dinner early to make sure i could see it

uh-huh uh so it would have been uh borges who had struck out in all three plate appearances and then wong and carpenter who had each struck out in two of four and yeah and if one of them had gotten on it would have been Cosma who had struck out in both of his right and so this is it's always a hard thing because like we are we're gonna say that they should have let him in should have let him stay in it would have been much more fun for everyone if they had done that we haven't done serious research into the effects of pitch count and i'm sure the indians have done extensive research on that subject like i'm would you would you guess that there is hard research behind this decision or that it was just a reflexive he's at 113 and that seems like a high number decision or would

you guess that like there is some you know when a guy goes beyond 110 or whatever. And if he had been as efficient in the ninth as he had been through the first eight innings, he would have finished at, I think, 127, which doesn't sound like an enormous number, but it would be the most anyone has thrown this season. So would you guess that there is hard, persuasive research behind this? Like if you could see into the Indians' system and look at the conclusions of their pitch count study, you would be swayed? If I had to guess, and you're making me guess. I don't know, right? So I'm hesitant to guess, but I will guess because you told me to guess.

Thank you. Very supportive of you. If I had to guess, I would not say that I thought it was likely that there was any hard research behind this. I don't think there it is a fact that throwing 130 pitches once is particularly risky, particularly probably once you have established yourself as a major league pitcher capable of throwing 120. have the day off tomorrow given that it was well it wasn't a day game was it it was like the the the the hour early i don't know if they have tomorrow off but if he had an extra day uh he doesn't have an extra day uh well they might have monday off they have monday off and he would get an extra day in which case uh then i don't i would feel perfectly fine what i'm saying is i don't think there's hard research because i don't think it's a fact. However, if you were to tell me that there was research, and I could accept that there might be, I would guess that maybe it's conceivable that perhaps Kluber, considering that he struck out 18 batters in eight innings,

it would not surprise me to learn that he, A, was throwing harder than he usually does, that he, A, was throwing harder than he usually does. B, was maybe throwing more sliders, perhaps better and harder sliders than he usually does. And I could see there being some correlation between the amount of strain that those pitches put on his arm that maybe the better your pitch is, maybe the worse it is for your arm. You and I talked recently about the Modus sleeve,

the Modus sleeve which has been rebranded, I forget what it's called, but the company is Modus and they have a sleeve that you wear, a wearable sleeve that among the many things it does is it basically can monitor the amount of torque that your arm is going through, or my words are not good, but the amount of strain that your arm is undergoing with each pitch. And so instead of just having a pitch count, you can kind of have a stress count or a fatigue level throughout the game in real time. Now, that is not approved for Major League Baseball yet, so you can't wear it in the game. Corey Kluber was not wearing it in the game, but most teams have used this sleeve this year at various points in their training or in spring

training or in their workouts, and so it's conceivable that they have, by looking at that, discovered that once Kluber or once any pitcher is throwing a mile an hour harder throughout a game than he usually does, that the strain is actually greater. That would be my hypothesis for what research might be there that would justify this. In fact, while we've been generally saying, oh, well, he's been cruising, therefore it's not as strenuous for him. It's not as laborious for him. I think that's probably true. There's good evidence of that. However, it could be that some of the variables that lead a pitcher to be, quote, cruising might themselves

be risky, like he's throwing harder or he's throwing more sharper breaking pitches and kluber has never thrown more than 120 he he had his three highest pitch count starts were all last year in august and september when the indians were in a playoff race and he was the cy young award winner or about to be and he had a 116 and a 118 and a 120 and he's never gone beyond that for whatever that's worth which i don't know and there was that article russell carlton did on like the effect of one start over a certain threshold and he found real things i don't know that they were so significant that you would forfeit a chance at a really cool, historic, exciting moment for them. But given that, I mean, the Indians are one of the more disappointing teams so far this year. They were picked by many to be the AL

Central favorite. They were, you know, roughly even playoff odds, as I recall, when the season started. And even after this win, they're 12 and 20. And their playoff odds are down to around one in four just to make the playoffs and, you know, 12.6% or something to win the division. So pretty long odds as it is, which I don't know whether that makes you say that they should be more willing to do this because they've had a lousy season. It hasn't been fun. And this gives you something to enjoy or they have no margin for error and they need every win. And if anything happens to Corey Kluber, who is their best pitcher and maybe the best pitcher, that would take them out of the race. And so they can't afford to gamble on it. You can sort of see that

perspective. Like if you're Brad Mills or Terry Francona or whatever, you're more concerned about winning the game. If you can have a team highlight and sell some collectible plates or something in the future, that's nice for your team, but you're probably not going to be fired or hired or kept employed based on that sort of thing. Whereas if Kluber hurts himself, maybe you will be. Maybe you'll lose. Maybe you won't make the playoffs because of it.

The thing is, it's 113 pitches. You don't have to let him go 140, right? Unless maybe it is. Maybe if you let him go out there and he strikes out one guy and then puts the next two on, and then you pull him, then maybe we're really mad because he's only one strikeout away. But, I mean, 113. He could get out of that inning in 126 without anything weird happening

and nobody is going to blink at 126 like in this day and age even nobody blinks at 126 from a veteran right like remember when johnny cueto did it and not one person said a thing until you 12 minutes ago yeah like clover has never done it but but i don't that was true of everybody until they did it right i also think that it's i don't i don't i mean this is actually maybe you could say this is brave it's surprising i'm not criticizing this but it's surprising to hear them say that you know they wanted to get closer closer in because this is sort of the perfect example of going to the closer actually being the riskier move from the manager getting second guest perspective. If Cody Allen comes in with his 90 RA and blows it, everybody's going to be like,

how did you pull Kluber? He's having maybe literally the greatest start of all time. And you pull him to go to your struggling closer. I mean, this was Jordan Zimmerman in the NLCS or NLDS, that decision, right? That you pull out your starter. And I know that the numbers would show that it is often an illusion that a starter is cruising and that he's liable to continue cruising. And knowing that and even feeling that way most, almost all the time, even I thought, no way Kluber gives up a run next inning.

There's no way. He's never giving up a run in the next inning. But that's how it always is until he gives up a run. So I totally see the logic behind that decision and I guess I applaud them for sticking with their sticking with that because it is true that it would have been very tempting

to leave Kluber in just for strategy reasons. That doesn't make me happy. I'm still unhappy. Yeah, me too. Come on. I mean it's all I want you know it is the it is like probably the record that is that is in the most sweet spot of conceivable to be broken and like thus far

unbreakable you know like like there are a lot of records that are just not going to be broken. Like nobody's going to break Cal Ripken's streak this year. Like that's not going to happen. Nobody's going to hit 74 home runs this year. Most records, nobody's going to steal 130. Most records are not going to be broken. And the ones that are, like they're not that special, you know. It's like doubles by a rookie might get broken, but who cares.

But this is like a prestige record. It is almost the only prestige record that could conceivably be broken right now. Five homers could be, and maybe a couple others. But this one could. It's totally doable. We got there. And to pull him without it being a bulletproof decision to pull him feels very odd to me.

Pineda, I was disappointed when they pulled Pineda, but I was not optimistic that I had a chance there. He was at like 101 pitches or something like that. I don't know, but he's Pineda.

I figured that if he... Right, he's Pineda. He had, I figured that if he, right, he's Pineda. I figured if he were a normal pitcher, he'd have 30 or 35 pitches to get seven, to get five more strikeouts. And that's not that, that's not unthinkable. Like, they could even have pulled him after 21.

But of course he's Pineda, and I thought, no, probably not going to. So disappointing, but I understood. But the Kluber one, like we were saying, even if he only had 16 strikeouts, we could have done a show on the decision to pull Kluber, like without even the strikeout record being in play. So that's what makes it particularly galling. Yeah, and we were just talking about the Randy Johnson decision in 2001

and how he had a shot at Nolan Ryan's strikeouts in a season record, and in that case, the Diamondbacks were weighing the upcoming postseason and his age and his past injuries, and he was super old, and you were about to start him for a month on three days rest a bunch of times and and there the stakes were much higher than in this case yeah it was the right decision i'm surprised that they stuck to it but that was the right decision yeah and this is this is this would have been much much easier to sign off on to have Kluber go out there and at least throw 10 pitches and see what happened and take him out before his pitch count climbed to any

sort of obscene amount. And it's a game in the middle of May and the stakes are not nearly as high. So it's disappointing. We we could figure it out but what do you guess the odds were that he ties and breaks the record do you have a ballpark sense i am not that interested in tying the record so i won't even bother because that's much more complicated math it's much more it's not complicated but it's much more complicated math. I'd give him about a, I don't know what, 30. This is probably not actually accurate. MGL would scold me for saying this.

But at that point in the game, the way he'd been pitching, I'd give him a 37% chance at each individual, which gives him a 5% chance at getting 21, which actually low doesn't it yeah well watching him it does but uh so let's say it was let's say i mean if he had a 47 percent chance of striking out each individual then that's 10 percent uh so still low maybe that was it maybe frank conan with the man he's like this is just this isn't gonna he's not probably gonna do it anyway he's this isn't going to end. He's not probably going to do it anyway. He's probably like 20. 20's been done. He's not going to get 21. I don't care.

I would be interested in 20, but I'm not that interested in 20. I'm very... 20's interesting. You did an award-winning article about a 20 strikeout game. Partly, though, that was different for a few reasons. One is that that wasn't just a 20 strikeout game. That was the greatest game ever pitched in a lot of people's minds. If Kluber had struck out two in that inning and not allowed base runners, it would have been as good, right?

Well, it would have been as good, right? Well, it would have been identical. It would have been a cheap hit and a hit by pitch and then 20 strikeouts. Yeah. But I don't know. Partly what that article was about was that it wasn't as dominant as you thought. Like it was in some ways more dominant than you thought and in some ways less dominant than you thought. So I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know that I'd want to write another one about the exact same story. 20 is interesting but it's been done. The thing about 20 is that right now I could tell you everybody who did 20. It's Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson, Rod Schwartz. It's the perfect three guys to have done it. Although maybe Nolan Ryan could fit in there, maybe Sandy Kovacs could fit in there. I want to quickly shift to an email that we didn't answer yesterday. It was a long email that started with a pretty simple question.

We're not going to get into the long part. It was about baseball immortality and what you can do to gain baseball immortality. Obviously you could set the all-time home run record, but these are sort of things that you could do to gain baseball immortality without being a superstar who has a superstar career. I think it cited an Atlantic article, I believe. There were, I think, seven or eight. Yeah, there were six things. Throw a perfect game, strike out 20, turn in unassisted triple play, play all nine positions in a game, hit four homers in a game, drive in 10 in a game. And I would actually argue that throw a perfect game is one, strike out 20 is one, hit four homers in a game is one, and the other three

are not. I couldn't tell you. Unassisted triple play is a gimmick. It means nothing. I couldn't tell you who's done it. Play all nine positions in a single game is literally a gimmick. It only exists as a gimmick. It is a Bill Vex stunt, nothing more. And driving 10 runs in a game is nice, but I didn't even know 10 was like that. I didn't know that 10 was the number. I didn't know that it wasn't 9 or 12.

So there's basically those three. And Strikeout 20 would still be that. But to me, Strikeout 20 in a game is almost the biggest of those three and strikeout 20 would still be that but to me strikeout 20 in a game is almost the biggest of those three because i know the three they're the perfect three and if it got no offense but if it got kind of diluted by cory kluber and you know like i'm i would be very happy if cory kluber held the record if he kind of shared it and now all of a sudden... So they're just looking out for the sanctity of the trifecta.

Yeah, but he could have had 21. Sure could have. You pull him as soon as he... I'd pull him as soon as anybody... I would protect the trifecta by pulling. There's still the risk that he strikes out the first two and not the last but you can do it. Any other ways of achieving immortality, by the way? I mean, hitting a walk-off in a

World Series is definitely one. To win. Lots of things you could, yeah, in a World Series. And everything is heightened. Oh, throw back-to-back no-hitters is definitely one. Need two games to do that, though. Oh, are these only things that you can do in a game? I guess

these are all things that you can do in a game. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, all right, well, throw a no-hitter after you've thrown another no-hitter. Mm-hmm. You don't need one game to do that. See? Right. Technicality. Okay. All right, well, you let us all down cleveland it is kind of nice it is encouraging though that we have been in the last week twice been close enough to feel

this the salty uh sea breeze in our faces like we've gotten there twice and um it's been a while since we've really gotten there. I can't remember really feeling that close in a while. I remember Chris Sale, I think, made me feel kind of close in one start. I don't even know if I'm right about that. But I remember, I'm going to check to see if it's true. I want to say 2012 or 2013. He started out 15-7-1. That's probably the game i'm thinking of and yeah because i mean 15 and 7 and third odds are that he had like 14 through 6 or something like

that uh but it's been a while since we've really gotten close yep well thanks for the thrill cory okay so that's it so in fact he had 14 through 6 Okay send us your emails Podcast at baseballperspectives.com Facebook group Facebook.com slash groups Slash effectively wild Sponsor play index at baseballreference.com Subscribe to the play index

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