4 Cleveland athletes who deserve their jerseys retired

#28 Corey Kluber

This one will come with plenty of detractors and that’s too be expected. That’s the price of greatness, after all. Corey Kluber, despite what anyone else may want to say, is arguably the greatest pitcher in Indians history. Full stop.

Again, those that control the Major League’s image cost Kluber not one, but two potential Cy Young awards. Had he even won one more than the two he already has, it wouldn’t be out of line at all to assume Kluber was heading to Cooperstown at the end of his career.

He only pitched six full seasons with the Indians, won two Cy Youngs, finished in the top 15 of MVP voting twice, and went to three straight All-Star games. Over that stretch, he was the best pitcher in all of baseball, at the very least the AL from 2013 to 2018. He ended up winning a  whopping 98 games over that time, which s is a partial testament to his dominance.

His .628% win/loss percentage is eighth all-time in club history. He’s also second all-time in walks/hits per inning pitch (1.086), third all-time for strikeouts per nine innings (9.8), third all-time in total strikeouts (1,461), number one all-time in strikeouts to walks with an average of 5.003 strikeouts per walk.

Sure, he got traded after an injury-plagued season but if C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee are any metric to grade Kluber against, he’ll probably regain his old form and torture more teams now that he’s in Texas.

The only knock against him was that he got called up full time at 27. Who knows if that’s his fault for not putting it all together yet, or if the Indians just didn’t know what they had. If he was ready four or five years earlier, it’s entirely possible he has five Cy Youngs, eight All-Star selections, 200 wins, and Bob Feller’s strikeout record. That’s a big “what if” though, admittedly.