Watch the baseball highlight shows tonight. While you’re doing so, pay attention to how many times you hear this phrase:
Kluber kept the ball down and commanded the ball to both sides of the plate.
Every time you hear it, scream at the screen, “Liars!”
Corey Kluber was dominant today because he’s deceptive as hell. His stuff is so nasty, with such devastating late movement, that he can miss badly over and over and get away with it. I counted no fewer than 10 pitches that split the middle of the plate up in the zone. These are pitches, if you are paying close attention, you would call poorly located.
Take Jonathan Schoop’s plate appearance in in the seventh inning. Kluber threw five pitches, finally punching Schoop out with a filthy slider off the plate away. That was the only pitch that Kluber truly executed. He misfired with location with the four other pitches in the battle and won with everything but command.
That’s not to say he didn’t “make pitches.”
Kluber’s 10th strikeout to Chris Davis was a four-seam fastball, executed on the corner, away, with velocity, command, the whole nine.
“Keep the ball down, Kluber!” his little-league coach yelled.
“Mind your business, coach," Kluber replied. "I’ve got this."
