Every Team's Most Interesting Player: Texas Rangers, Corey Kluber

This is the 28th in a series of articles about the most interesting player for fantasy owners on each team heading into the 2020 season. We are going alphabetically, so today we’re going to talk about Corey Kluber of the Texas Rangers.

It wasn’t long ago that Kluber was mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer, but now Kluber’s ADP sits at No. 97 overall, and 28th among starting pitchers. The reason for the steep drop was a nightmarish 2019 campaign in which he went 2-3 with a 5.80 ERA and shockingly bad 1.65 WHIP before a broken forearm and subsequent oblique injury ended his season. While that season is undoubtedly atrocious, especially for the price owners had to pay for him, does it really warrant his complete dismissal as an elite SP option?

First, his numbers were his numbers prior to breaking the forearm. There weren’t any lingering injury issues entering 2019 either. He flat out pitched to a 5.80 ERA in his first seven starts before injuries robbed him of any opportunity to fix it. He posted a much lower FIP (4.06), but that’s nowhere close to elite, and his 3.79 BB/9 was by far the worst mark of his career. At age 33, it’s fair to wonder whether we’ve gotten through Kluber’s peak, and continuing to draft him at his old ADP would be paying for past performance.

There are reasons to go the other way. Kluber was victimized by exceptionally bad luck on batted balls, posting a .370 BABIP that is more than 70 points worse than his career average. He didn’t lose any velocity from prior seasons, and he actually induced more soft contact than he had in 2018. He also showed the same movement on his cutter, and even more break on his curveball in 2019 than in 2018, but saw steep drops in their value. This could be the start of a downward trend, but it could’ve also been a slow start for an undervalued ace that became permanent thanks to injury.

Prior to the putrid start to 2019, Kluber hadn’t shown any signs of slowing down. He posted sub-3.00 ERAs in 2017 and 2018, and hadn’t dipped below a 3.85 ERA since 2012. He’s always showed remarkable command, posting a 2.57 BB/9 or lower from 2012-2018, with last season’s high WHIP looking like a strange blip rather than a continuation of trouble that was brewing. Kluber carries some risk; he’s not the youngest arm, and he’s heading to one of the best hitter parks in baseball for a team that may be among MLB’s worst. But his track record should afford him much more leeway than he’s getting right now. He’d been a stud for five straight seasons, and durable too, logging more than 200 innings in all five of these ace-level campaigns. Right now Kluber is looking like one of the best bargains in fantasy baseball.