Time is everything, both in sports and in life. If the timing is right between Corey Kluber and the New York Yankees, with whom the former ace was closing a one-year, $ 11 million deal on Friday, it will be good news for the long-term pitcher – and perhaps even better for the team in the short term.
Speaking of time, in the broader context of this winter’s free agent market, Kluber’s free agency time reveals an irony when you consider the similar status of former Cleveland teammate Trevor Bauer. Kluber is almost five years older than Bauer, but for five entire seasons (2014 to 2018), Kluber was the most dominant pitcher in the American League, leading the circuit in wins (83) and WAR (31.7), according with Baseball- Reference. He won two Cy Young Awards and finished third in the poll twice more.
In each of these seasons, he was better than Bauer, with the arguable exception of Bauer’s debut season in 2018, when both right-handers ranked among the top American League Cy Young contenders. However, here we are, two seasons later, and it’s Bauer, not Kluber, the most coveted pitcher on the market. It was Kluber, not Bauer, who had to test the teams, launching 30 pitches for scouts and other interested parties earlier this week, at a meeting in which up to 25 teams were represented.
At a minimum, this should help to light a fuse under Kluber. The same will happen with the short term of his new contract, which is partly the result of his own preference, according to the Newark Star-Ledger, as he hopes to get a bigger payment next year. That should be OK for the Yankees, who have acquired a pitcher who has only launched 36 entries in the past two seasons. In 2020, which represents Kluber’s entire career with the Texas Rangers, he launched 18 pitches, or 12 fewer than in his showcase earlier this week.
For Kluber, the deal is a chance to prove that his remarkable career has a promising second act in progress. For the Yankees, it is a low-risk, high-advantage business for a pitcher who was recently among the elite of the elite, but whose recent sequence of injuries makes a multiyear fanfare very risky.
So what kind of Klubot did the Bombers just acquire?