How The Indians Corey Kluber And Carlos Carrasco Are Dominating With The Slider

How They Threw Them (Velocity and Movement)

Click the grey boxes to switch between highlighting Carrasco and Kluber’s pitches.

Kluber’s slider stands out as having the largest average horizontal movement (10.3 in) of any slider thrown by a starter in the Pitch F/x era. Only

‘s slider can challenge his overall movement, which gives you a sense of how nasty his is. He throws the pitch 82 mph on average, making it the slowest pitch in his arsenal. We’ll see in the later sections how his sweeping break affects when and where he throws the pitch.

Carrasco, on the other hand, throws his slider significantly harder (87 mph) with a much tighter break. This allows him to control the pitch quite well and while the break may not be large, it’s sharp enough to keep hitters off-balance. The pitch fits well within his arsenal due to a

similar vertical drop to his filthy 90+mph changeup

, except without the tail towards right-handed batters.

In fact, Carrasco’s slider is closer in movement and velocity to Kluber’s cutter, as you can see in the pitch path graphics below. I could write a whole article about Kluber’s cutter, so it’s safe to say that it’s a comparison that Carrasco shouldn’t be afraid of.