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

Where They Threw Them (Location)

The heat maps above show that Carrasco likes to throw his slider in the zone relatively often while trying to get hitters to chase pitches on that are outside to right handed hitters. As mentioned before, Carrasco’s can command his slider well due to the sharper break, which is why you see more yellow and a little orange in the middle of the zone. He can get hitters expecting a tailing changeup to reach out for a slider that darts outside at the last second. Kluber, on the other hand, tends to work below the zone when trying to get hitters to chase. While Kluber’s slider’s horizontal break was historic, its vertical break is also impressive, so it’s not surprising that he likes to throw the pitch below the batter’s knees. It also makes more sense to throw his slider below the zone against lefties to avoid hitting them. When we look at the difference between how Kluber throws the pitch against lefties and righties, you can see that Kluber gets more of those swings at outside pitches when throwing to righties while he aims for the dirt when facing lefties.