12/21/24
May 14, 2015
Corey Kluber Strikes Out 18 in 8, But Doesn't Pitch 9th: Cleveland Indians ace Corey Kluber had 18 strikeouts through eight innings last night against the St. Louis Cardinals, a performance ESPN's David Schoenfield suggests might have been "the greatest performance in major league history." He took a no-hitter into the seventh and was at 113 pitches with just one hit. He was two strikeouts from tying the record shared by Roger Clemens and Kerry Wood. But Brad Mills, who took Terry Francona's spot as manager after his ejection during the game, didn't send him out for the ninth. "Millsy knows what he's doing," Francona said afterwards.
This isn't a game "early" in the season. It was 8th start, in the middle of May.
This isn't a pitcher who is under 25 years old. He's 29, so not young by any stretch of the imagination.
This isn't a pitcher who had any taxing innings that game. He had one inning of 20 pitches, one of 16 pitches, and the rest were 15 and under. His last inning was 12 pitches.
This isn't a pitcher who had to worry about workload. He threw 235 innings last year, and won the Cy Young.
This was a pitcher about to face three batters who he had already struck out twice each that game.
This was a pitcher being replaced by a reliever with an ERA of 9.00.
This was a pitcher with a chance to tie (or break) history.
I've got him on my fantasy baseball team and would hate to see him get injured, but you have to leave him in there for the 9th inning. If he gives up a walk, or a hit, then you pull him.
posted by grum@work at 10:29 AM on May 14, 2015
Yeah, what a silly decision.
Kluber's never thrown more than 120 pitches in his career, but it would be pretty unlikely he'd survive an extended inning with base runners anyways.
Effectively Wild pointed out that teams now have a sleeve that gives them information on arm torque, so it's plausible that they have some data on what happens to Kluber's arm and the risk it poses as he goes deep into games, but still - it seems like the risk would be minute to let him go out and at least try to get the lead off guy in the inning, then assess.