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

Who They Threw Them To (Platoon Split)

When looking at how the two pitchers distributed their sliders among same handed hitters and opposite handed hitters, you can notice a big difference. Carrasco relied heavily on his slider when facing righties, while Kluber threw more sliders to lefties. Some of this has to do with Kluber facing more lefties (54% of batters faced compared to Carrasco’s 48%), but it also has to do with the rest of the pitches the two starters throw. Carrasco’s deadly changeup is a very effective pitch against lefties so he prefers to use that as his strikeout pitch. Changeups tend to not have a large platoon split, so it makes sense that Carrasco likes to throw his to get lefties out. Kluber has a decent changeup, but he doesn’t use it very often, and while his cutter is very good against lefties, it doesn’t have a large velocity differential from his sinker and four seam fastball, so if he wants to change speeds he’s probably going to end up throwing his slider.