Corey Kluber announced his retirement on Friday, bringing the curtain down on an exceptional career whose later years were so often curtailed by injuries. Kluber pitched in the majors for parts of 13 seasons, but topped 100 innings just seven times, six in a row from 2013–18 and again in ’22. Within that limited timeframe, he made three All-Star teams and won two Cy Youngs, with a pair of top-three finishes and a ninth-place finish as well. His 2016 postseason run came up just short of ending Cleveland’s long championship drought. His is a career worth celebrating and putting into context, as his best work stands alongside that of a handful of Hall of Fame contemporaries.

Because he spent half a decade at the front of Cleveland’s rotation, it’s easy to forget that Kluber was actually drafted by the Padres, who chose him in the fourth round out of Stetson University in 2007. He climbed to Double-A San Antonio by 2010; on July 31 of that year, he was part of a three-team trade, heading to Cleveland while Jake Westbrook was sent from Cleveland to St. Louis, Ryan Ludwick from St. Louis to San Diego, and Nick Greenwood from San Diego to St. Louis. After a cup of coffee in late 2011, Kluber spent the first two-thirds of the next season at Triple-A Columbus, then joined the big club’s rotation in August.

Kluber was shaky in that 2012 stint, posting a 5.14 ERA in 12 starts covering 63 innings, but he broke out the next year, making 24 starts and totaling 147.1 innings; his final 3.85 ERA (99 ERA+) was inflated by a .329 BABIP and some post-injury September struggles. Perfecting his mid-90s sinker/slider/cutter combo, he emerged as a legitimate ace in 2014, winning his first Cy Young on the strength of an 18-9 record, a 2.44 ERA, 269 strikeouts (28.3%) and a league-best WAR in multiple flavors (7.2 fWAR, 8.1 bWAR). Dismal run support led to a 9-16 record in 2015 despite a 3.49 ERA, 245 strikeouts, and 4.4 WAR, still good for fifth in the league; the highlight of his season was an 18-strikeout, eight-inning performance on May 3.

Kluber made his first All-Star team and helped Cleveland win the AL Central in 2016 while leading the league in both ERA+ (144, via a 3.14 ERA) and FIP (3.26) and ranking second in WAR (5.6), a performance that would land him third in the Cy Young voting. He went on a dominant run in the 2016 postseason, making three scoreless starts among his first four, beginning with a seven-inning performance in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Red Sox and then a 6.1-inning showing in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Blue Jays. He took the loss with a five-inning, two-run start on three days of rest in Game 4, but after Cleveland won the series in five, he responded with six shutout innings against the Cubs to open the World Series, becoming the first pitcher in World Series history to strike out eight batters within the first three frames.

Again on three days of rest, Kluber threw six innings of one-run ball in Game 4 and even collected a single off John Lackey, putting Cleveland up three games to one; to that point, he had posted a 0.89 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 30.1 innings in October. After the Cubs won the next two games, he returned to start Game 7, making him the first pitcher since Kevin Brown in 1998 to take three postseason starts on three days of rest. It was too much; he allowed four runs in four-plus innings, capped by a Javier Báez solo homer on his first pitch of the fifth. Though his team would rally to tie the game and send it into extra innings, it was the Cubs who ended their even longer championship drought.

Any notion that Kluber had overworked himself that October went out the window with his 2017 performance. His 18 wins (against four losses), 2.25 ERA, five complete games, three shutouts and 7.9 WAR all led the AL, and he received 28 out of 30 first-place votes while taking home his second Cy Young award. He was rocked by the Yankees in two Division Series starts, however, allowing nine runs while totaling just 6.1 innings. He had one more great season, going 20-7 with a 2.89 ERA and 6.0 WAR, good for another third-place finish in the Cy Young voting.

Then, alas, the injuries. On May 1, 2019, he took a 102-mph comebacker off his right forearm, fracturing his ulna and ending his season. While Cleveland picked up his $13.5 million option, on December 15, 2019 he was traded to Texas for Emmanuel Clase and Delino DeShields Jr.. He threw just one inning as a Ranger before tearing his teres major, sidelining him for the rest of the pandemic-shortened campaign.

After reaching free agency, Kluber made three more stops. Though he missed half a season with the Yankees due to a shoulder strain, on May 19, 2021 he no-hit the Rangers. He was healthy enough to take the ball for 31 starts with the Rays in 2022, but slipped to a 4.34 ERA (84 ERA+). In 2023 with the Red Sox, he lasted less than two months in the rotation and another three weeks in the bullpen before shoulder inflammation and a 7.04 ERA forced his removal from the active roster. In a very odd quirk, he collected the lone save of his career in what now stands as his final game, a four-run, three-inning mop-up job protecting what was initially a 10-0 lead.

Kluber finished his career with a 116-77 record, a 3.44 ERA (122 ERA+), and 1,725 strikeouts in 1,641.2 innings. The counting stats don’t read as Hall of Fame caliber, mainly because there aren’t any non-Negro Leagues starters with so few innings who are enshrined; Addie Joss (2,327 innings), Sandy Koufax (2,324.1), and Dizzy Dean (1,967) are the low men among the enshrinees. Kluber’s 34.4 S-JAWS — he’s the rare pitcher with a higher seven-year peak WAR (34.9) than career WAR (34.4) — isn’t really Hall-caliber either, as it outranks just two of the 66 enshrined starters. As I noted in the aftermath of his retirement announcement, he’s likely to join Tim Lincecum, Denny McLain, Bret Saberhagen, and Johan Santana (and likely Jacob deGrom and Blake Snell as well) among the ranks of two-time Cy Young winners outside the Hall.

Excluding deGrom and Snell, that group — five of the nine eligible pitchers who have won exactly two Cy Young awards — is an imperfect shorthand for pitchers who burned brightly but a bit too briefly for enshrinement. Eleven pitchers have won more than two Cy Youngs, and excluding a trio of still-active but clearly Hall-bound hurlers (Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander), seven of the other eight are enshrined, the exception being Roger Clemens, due to his connection to performance-enhancing drugs. Seven one-time winners are in (not including the trio who won the award as relievers), as are over three dozen pitchers who never won the award, which wasn’t created until 1956.

Here’s how the two-time winner group stacks up. You can sort any of the columns:

The most obvious separator between the Hall of Famers and non-Hall of Famers within that group is 200 wins. While there are nine starters with fewer than 200 who are enshrined, all but Koufax predate the introduction of the Cy Young award, and in fact the rest predate the end of World War II, save for a single Dean cameo in 1947.

As you may be aware if you’ve been following along with my coverage of present and future Hall of Fame ballots, we can foresee a dearth of 200-win pitchers coming up for consideration besides the still active quartet (Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander and one-time Cy Young winner Zack Greinke) and the 2025-eligible CC Sabathia. With recent eras already significantly underrepresented — a point I made at length in a multipart series in early 2022 — and with decreased workloads likely to make major milestones such as 200 wins or even 50.0 S-JAWS (Sabathia’s at 50.6) much harder to attain, voters and interested parties are going to have to rethink what they’re looking for in a Hallworthy starting pitcher.

I’ve been making this point for awhile by switching to S-JAWS, which scales back the peak scores of pitchers whose workloads are unthinkable by today’s standards, but that’s not the only way to look at the matter. Last month at MLB.com, Mike Petriello took a look at pitchers through the lens of rolling seven-year WAR leaders, specifically citing my JAWS work in choosing seven years while acknowledging that I wasn’t referring to seven consecutive seasons. The article nonetheless put my original formulation of JAWS, which used five consecutive seasons, in mind, and that thought echoed back to me when I summarized Kluber’s elite 2014–18 run: 83-45, 2.85 ERA (151 ERA+), 32.0 WAR (31.9 once we include offense, as we do in JAWS and S-JAWS). In a similar vein, Codify Baseball recently tweeted out a list of 10-year rolling WAR leaders:

Pitching WAR leaders, rolling 10-year periods
(bWAR/fWAR if those WARs had different leaders):

1974-1983: Phil Niekro/Steve Carlton
1975-1984: Phil Niekro/Steve Carlton
1976-1985: Phil Niekro/Steve Carlton
1977-1986: Ron Guidry/Steve Carlton
1978-1987: Ron Guidry/Nolan Ryan…

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) January 30, 2024

With all of that in mind, I thought it would be worth contextualizing the quality of Kluber’s elite five-year run in terms of where it sits when we examine rolling WAR leaders, and whether there are other unenshrined pitchers who particularly stand out when we view things this way. Stieb, a better pitcher than the enshrined Jack Morris until shoulder and back problems shut him down in his mid-30s, and Félix Hernández, who threw a ton of innings in his early 20s and didn’t have much success after 30, stand out via the rolling 10-year leaderboard; it’s worth keeping an eye out for them in the five-year totals as well.

In identifying the top five-year streaks of interest — which would not have been possible without the assistance of Adam Darowski and Kenny Jackelen of Baseball Reference, the latter of whom did the heavy lifting, data-wise — I settled upon using 1978 as a starting point. It’s not a neat divide, but by that point, all of the pitchers from That Seventies Group, the six Hall of Famers who won 300 games (Perry, Steve Carlton, Phil Niekro, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, and Don Sutton) and a few other stragglers who came close, had done their heavy lifting, leaving room for what now stands as an underrepresented generation of pitchers within the Hall. It turns out Kluber’s aforementioned 31.9 WAR ranks 46th within that group, one of 81 five-year stretches in which a pitcher accumulated at least 30.0 WAR. Pedro Martinez (42.4 from 1997–2001, Randy Johnson (42.1 from 1998–2002) and Clemens (41.4 from 1986-90) occupy the top three spots, with Martinez appearing four times within the top 10, Clemens three times, Greg Maddux twice (40.6 from 1992-96 was his best despite the strike) and Johnson once. Rounding up the list to 25 pitchers by dropping the five-year WAR threshold to 29.3 (and thereby capturing 88 five-year stretches), Kluber is one of six pitchers with just one entry:

Even with just the one five-year stretch making the cut, Kluber’s placement on this list is impressive. Those five years in question were more valuable than any similar stretch by Verlander, a surefire Hall of Famer, or Sabathia, a probable one. That stretch also outdoes the best ones of Hershiser, Cone, and Saberhagen, three pitchers who stood out from within underrepresented birth decades during my S-JAWS series. Of course, none of those pitchers has quite as strong a showing as Brown or even Stieb, who also stood out in that study, or Santana, who belongs in a long-overdue follow-up installment. This is good company!

As for a few other names you might wonder about, among recent Hall of Famers, Tom Glavine (28.2 from 1995-99), John Smoltz (26.2 for those same years), and Mike Mussina (27.7 from 1997–2001) never had a five-year stretch of at least 30 WAR. Since I’ve mentioned Stieb, I’m obliged to note Morris’ best five-year stretch was just 21.6 WAR (1983–87). Among current or recent candidates, both Mark Buehrle (23.5 for 2007–11) and Andy Pettitte (22.2 for 1996–2000) trail Tim Hudson (27.0 for 2000–04), who fell off the ballot after falling short of 5% in 2022; that pair also trails Roy Oswalt (26.5 from 2004–08). Hernández’s best five-year run comes in at 27.4 WAR for 2010–14, a bit below Cole Hamels‘ 27.7 from the same years.

Among active pitchers, Greinke just missed the cut, with 29.2 WAR from 2013–17. Gerrit Cole‘s 24.2 for 2019–23 reflects the impact of the pandemic-shortened season, and likewise Aaron Nola’s 24.0 for 2018–22. Ohtani, who made the cut above, did so despite throwing just 1.2 innings in 2019–20; his offense rockets him into the picture on the basis of his 28.5 WAR over the past three seasons (remember, he was terrible at the plate in 2020 as well).

Five years is just one choice we can make when it comes to these increments, and in this case it’s useful for situating Kluber historically. The B-Ref folks also sent me data for seven- and 10-year increments. Again using 1978 as a convenient dividing line, here’s a look at the best seven-year runs:

That’s 29 pitchers accounting for 106 seven-year stretches. Aiming to get a similar number of hurlers as the previous table, I had to include more increments since the same names pop up over and over, and I decided to go below my intended cutoff of 38.0 WAR in the name of variety. Clemens not only occupies the top spot, but every single seven-year increment of his career (1984–2007) clears that threshold, which helps to explain why he’s third in S-JAWS all-time. Even so, he’s only got one other entry in the top 10 (1985–91) while Martinez occupies four of the top six spots, with Maddux and Johnson each taking up two more places within the top 10.

You have to drill down to the 16th-best streak to get to Kershaw, though to be fair his best stretch began 12 years later than any of the ones from the pitchers above him, long enough that starter workloads had been reduced a fair amount. Santana again shows up among the heavyweights, Appier and Cone have surprisingly strong presences, and Glavine, Mussina, and Greinke make their appearances; further down, so do Hernández, Hamels, and Oswalt. Hudson (31.0 WAR for 2002–08), Buehrle (30.7 WAR for 2004–10), and Pettitte (28.9 WAR for 1996–2002) didn’t come close to making the cut. They’re well below Kluber, whose best seven-year stretch, for the 2013–19 span, comes in at a respectable 33.1 WAR, which is to say that the seasons that surround that standout five-year run don’t add much; in fact, he was 0.4 wins below replacement level in the last of those years.

As for the 10-year list, you’ve already got an inkling of what it’s going to show from the Codify tweet, but here’s how it looks within my format:

Those 25 pitchers totaled 141 10-year stretches of at least 46.9 WAR, with the usual suspects atop the list. This time around, Martinez has the lead and three spots in the top 10, while Clemens also has three, and Johnson and Maddux two apiece. Current and future Hall of Famers plus those outside by their own making occupy the top dozen spots, and it’s worth noting Cone and Santana sit comfortably alongside Greinke and Glavine. Sabathia is a bit further down, in the middle of the next tier with some other familiar names plus a couple of newcomers in Viola and Finley.

Among the others of note I’ve tracked through this, Buerhle (44.2 WAR from 2001–10) isn’t that far outside the group, ahead of Hudson (43.3 from 1999–2008) by a bit and Pettitte (39.3 from 1996–2005) by a much wider margin; Cole (39.7 from 2014–23) has already surpassed his Yankees predecessor. Kluber (35.3 from 2013–22) is a significant step down from that bunch.

As should be apparent, the more seasons one incorporates into an exercise like this, the more closely it resembles the existing career, peak, and/or (S-)JAWS leaderboards; indeed, one reason why I chose seven years at large for a peak score is that 10 doesn’t give us much more information than career WAR. All of this is helpful to think about as we look for additional insight outside of JAWS and S-JAWS. In another installment, I’ll take a closer look at the resemblance to those existing rankings as well as one or two other ideas I have for capturing this effect.

As for Kluber, I don’t expect him to get much traction when he lands on the 2029 Hall of Fame ballot alongside the likes of Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz, and Adam Wainwright (who’s conspicuous in his absence from these rankings). Still, his was a remarkable career, one that at its best can stand with the era’s heavyweights.

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