History in the Making: Reaching The Cleveland Indians All-Time Top 20

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Corey Kluber – 12.4 career WAR

For all his struggles in the increasingly pointless W/L column in 2015, Kluber was still excellent with 4.2 WAR. He’s got some ground to cover if he wants to get to that 35, but he could still do it. Right now he’s signed to the Tribe through 2021 including options, giving him six years to get that last 23 WAR. That breaks down to just under 4 WAR a year. Baseball Reference uses Runs Allowed per 9 to calculate their WAR, which is ERA but includes unearned runs.

Kluber was wounded by a terrible defense behind him for months and was still ace caliber. With the new look D behind him for a whole season, including hopefully the addition of perhaps Kevin Pillar or a similar “Go And Get It” type of center fielder, he should normalize back to that 5-6 range in 2016. As he gets older you can expect some fade, perhaps as much as .5 WAR on average per year. But say he gets 6 in 2016, his age 30 season. That’s feasible. That gets him to 18.4. He would have five more years to get less than 18 WAR. Even expecting .5 WAR regression a year that gets him 22.5 WAR, giving him some wiggle room to struggle and maybe a hamstring pull or some dead arm.

Pitchers are dangerous to put hope into but to this point Kluber has been a rock in the rotation for three seasons. All we have is past results. He probably won’t climb into the 45-50 range, at least not as an Indian, but he’s got an outside shot at the Top 20 Tribe all time.

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