Keri: Beyond the surface of Kluber's slump

The first two innings of Corey Kluber’s most recent start were nothing short of a disaster. In the first inning of Sunday’s series ender against the Mets, Curtis Granderson led off with a walk. Asdrubal Cabrera followed with a single, then Michael Conforto rapped a double. Two batters later, Lucas Duda singled home two runs. Five batters into the game, and Kluber was already down 3-0.

Then things got worse. After recording two outs to start the inning, Kluber ceded a triple to Granderson, then a single by Cabrera, and consecutive doubles. 6-0 Mets, game effectively over, and we’re not even through the top of the second. Kluber did settle down from there, going on to strike out eight batters in six innings, while walking just one. Still, the six runs he allowed raised his ERA on the young season to 6.31, the eighth-highest mark in the American League.

Kluber’s early-season struggles mark a good jumping-off point for our new feature, “Real or Mirage?” The premise of the series is simple. We’ll delve deep into individual player profiles, to see a run of unusually strong or weak performance might be a sign of things to come, or simply the product of random statistical noise, often driven by small sample size.

The peripherals

Let’s start by looking at Kluber’s peripheral numbers. In layman’s terms, peripherals refer to stats a pitcher can best control, strikeout rate, walk rate, and groundball rate. We do see a bit of erosion in those numbers: His strikeout rate sits at 22.9 percent, after hitting 27.7 percent last year and 28.3 percent the year before. Kluber’s walk rate is up a bit from 2014 and 2015 levels, but it’s still close enough to fall within the margin for error. Meanwhile his groundball rate is down from peak 2014 levels, but still higher than 2015’s showing.

Strikeout Rate:

With strikeout rate the only largely pitcher-controlled metric that looks a little out of whack, we can now dig deeper. If a pitcher’s strikeout rate starts to fall, we can examine pitch velocity to see if it’s consistent with past levels. Here we see that Kluber’s fastball has indeed lost a smidge of steam: It’s down more than one mph from 2015’s level, and more than two ticks compared to 2016.

Swing-and-miss rate:

Before we sound the alarm on this one facet of his game, though, check out Kluber’s swing-and-miss rate. A pitcher’s swing-and-miss rate (or whiff rate) can sometimes give us insight beyond raw strikeout numbers, since a pitcher who doesn’t miss bats become more vulnerable to bad results on balls in play. Kluber’s whiff rate so far this season? 15.3 percent, a career best.

Let’s move onto other numbers. Kluber has allowed 22 hits in 19 innings, the highest hit rate he’s given up since his rocky 2012 rookie season. Normally we might wave off that kind of fluctuation as a result of an elevated batting average on balls in play. Kluber’s BABIP does indeed sit at .357, which is both a career high and 63 points higher than MLB average this year. On the other hand, Kluber’s own career BABIP sits at .318, one of the highest figures of any active big league starting pitcher.

Balls in play:

We can gain some additional perspective on balls-in-play results too. Opposing batters are hitting fewer line drives off Kluber this year than in any previous season. They are, however, making hard contact somewhat more frequently than in past seasons.

Pitch count:

Is Kluber perhaps throwing more fat pitches in 2016 than he has in the past? The heat maps below (provided by TruMedia) suggest otherwise. Compare Kluber’s pitch frequency map from 2011-2015 …

Kluber’s Pitch Frequency Map (2011-2015)

… to his 2016 pitch frequency map …

Kluber’s Pitch Frequency Map (2016)

… and we find a pitcher who’s doing a better job of keeping the ball down this year than he has in the past.

One factor which can often explain a pitcher’s rising or falling results on balls in play is the quality of the defense behind him. The addition of Francisco Lindor to last year’s lineup (plus some smaller factors) immediately transformed the Indians defense from one of the game’s worst to one of its best.

So far this year, the D has been bad again. Data furnished to CBS Sports by Baseball Info Solutions show the Indians are second-to-last in Defensive Runs Saved among American League teams so far this season. We can even get more granular with that analysis too. The Indians’ worst defensive position so far this year, by far, has been center field; Tribe center fielders have been five runs worse than league average to date. Much of that specific weakness can be traced to one game … the game Kluber started and lost on Sunday.

And if we drill down even deeper, we can see that Rajai Davis’s second-inning adventures were responsible for much of that shortfall. Needing one more out to get a 1-2-3 second, Kluber induced Granderson to hit a lazy flyball to center field. But Davis lost the ball in the blinding sun, giving Granderson a gift “triple” in the scorecard. Three batters later, Davis lost another ball in the sun, this one going as an RBI “double” for Yoenis Cespedes. If Davis makes the first of those plays, the Mets go down in order in the second; instead, Mother Nature fueled a three-run inning.

Conclusion:

The fact that one or two balls lost in the sun could so dramatically affect Kluber’s results leads us to our conclusion: This is probably just small sample size-related noise. Though strikeout rate does tend to become predictive quicker than most other pitching stats, Kluber hasn’t faced enough batters yet this year for anyone to say with confidence that his K rate is truly likely to significantly declining. It’s possible that Cleveland’s defense could slip from second-half 2015 levels, if Davis plays a bunch more games in center and 38-year-old Marlon Byrd keeps patrolling right field. But All-Star left fielder Michael Brantley is expected back by month’s end, which should improve the Indians’ overall outfield defense. Lindor playing from day one this year should give Cleveland’s defense an additional boost.

It’s quite possible that Kluber never reaches the level of excellence he showed in 2014, when he posted a stellar 2.44 ERA over 235 2/3 innings (backed by fantastic peripheral stats), netting him his first Cy Young award. Still, the Kluber who last year posted a strikeout-to-walk rate of better than 5-to-1, with a fielding independent pitching mark below three runs per game, could reappear soon.

By random chance, or the Egyptian Sun God Ra, Kluber’s working on a third straight season in which April marks his worst monthly ERA of the season. Don’t expect these early struggles to last much longer.

Corey Kluber’s poor start may be just that, a poor start. (USATSI)