Kluber set for return to majors next week
OAKLAND — The Yankees’ current state is the best it’s been all season.
The wins are obviously the main attention grabber; stringing 12 in a row together will do that. But the roster is also nearing its best iteration. Even if playing time has been sparser than he’d like, Luke Voit is back and recently earned American League Player of the Week. Anthony Rizzo and Gary Sanchez are free of the coronavirus, and there’s also another All-star making his way back to the starting rotation.
“Kluber is back with us,” Boone said. “He will actually pitch for us on Monday.”
Corey Kluber — the two-time Cy Young winner and owner of over 1,500 MLB strikeouts — is the most recent addition to the Yankees’ traveling party. While he won’t pitch in any of the games in Oakland, Kluber has been roaming around the Coliseum and getting his workouts in, also taking time to say hi to Oakland catcher Yan Gomes, who caught him 141 times when the duo played together in Cleveland.
It’s been a long road back for Kluber. He last pitched in the bigs on May 25, one start removed from a no-hitter against his former team in Texas. The outing on May 25 lasted just three innings before he was removed with a balky shoulder. This raised obvious red flags, as Kluber threw all of one inning in 2020 before a tear in the same shoulder shut his season down. While he was able to avoid surgery, a season-ending injury to a 34-year-old pitcher’s throwing shoulder is often the first domino toward prolonged ineffectiveness, or worse, retirement.
Not so for Kluber, though. He rebounded magnificently in his first season with the Yankees. Through ten starts he had a 3.04 ERA and did not allow more
than four earned runs in any of his starts. The wiley sinker and cutter artist was doing a masterful job keeping the ball on the ground as well. His ground ball rate in those first 10 starts before the injury was 46.4% and nine of the 27 outs in his no-hitter came on the ground.
Now 35 years old, Kluber was calmly optimistic when the injury happened. He mentioned straight after the game that he was feeling more “fatigued” and “heavy” than in pain like he was when his 2020 season got shut down.
“I tried to try to throw a few innings in hopes that the adrenaline and all that kind of stuff can go on with getting it to get going. Just wasn’t quite able to and it was kind of compromising my quality of pitches and how I was able to execute pitches and stuff,” Kluber said at the time. “That combined with probably trying to be smart, not pushing it and maybe risk injuring something else, that sort of stuff.”
The Yankees were certainly patient with his rehab process. Kluber did not pitch in a game until Aug. 12, when he suited up for the Somerset Patriots and turned in 1.1 innings of awful command. Kluber looked every part like a minor league pitcher, not the one who’s fifth among active pitchers in career WHIP. That day on the farm, Kluber walked four Double-a hitters and drilled two more while recording just one strikeout.
His next two assignments were better, and in his most recent one on August 24 he pitched into the fourth inning for the first time during his ramp-up. The Yankees liked what they saw in that one and are hoping it can translate to the big leagues, where he’ll face the Angels and likely the Orioles after that.
“I think he’s ready for this next step,” Boone said on Thursday. “He’s responded well physically, he’s feeling good. He’s been bouncing back from his outings well as he’s been building up here. He’s ready to take on major league competition and go to that next level.”
The return of Kluber does mean that trade deadline pickup Andrew Heaney will be asked to take a different role. With the Yankees practicing extreme caution — and Boone allowing that Kluber is “not all the way built up like his full starter load” — the manager said that Heaney will likely piggyback on Kluber’s start on Monday in Anaheim. Boone also said that he would consider Heaney as a sixth starter given that the Yankees have 20 games in 20 days beginning on Sept. 3.