Should the Indians Extend Corey Kluber?

The Indians have a lot of decisions to make this off-season, but unlike those have discussed considering Mike Aviles, Lonnie Chisenhall, Zach McAllister and Josh Tomlin, any decision about Kluber will be a positive one. While those other players have to be evaluated as to whether they will even be on the team in 2015, Kluber will not only be there, but will be the ace. The question about Kluber however, is will he get even better and if so, should the Indians try to lock him up for the long haul.

To start, we need to cover the exact situation Kluber is in for those who don’t know. Because he did not play his rookie year until he was 26 years old, Kluber is in an unfortunate place as far as monetizing his career. Despite his amazing season in 2014, he was just paid $514K for the season and looks to make just slightly more than that in 2015. He will first be arbitration eligible going into the 2016 season and won’t be eligible for free agency until the 2019 season. If the Indians were to sign him long term, based on similar situations in the past, they would likely try to keep him until about 2020, using up all his arbitration years and his first two through free agency. In that season, however, he would be 34 years old.

Looking into the money side of things, while Kluber is missing out on some major cash by not being a free agent right now, he is still set to be one of the highest paid Indians in history if he stays in town through arbitration. The chart to the right shows expected payouts for Kluber if he goes to arbitration every year compared to a single long term contract. The numbers for arbitration are based off the 2014 season so some inflation is to be expected. First year players compared were Stephen Strasburg, Mike Minor and Dillon Gee, second year were Jeff Samardzija, Ian Kennedy and Doug Fister and third year arbitration eligibles were Max Scherzer, David Price and Justin Masterson. Long term deals are comparable to those signed this off-season by Madison Bumgarner and Chris Sale.

The Indians are in for at least $20 million for Kluber by the start, but how that money is distributed is some of the question. If they choose to go the first route, Kluber has no choice but to go along with it, but he would be free to leave in 2019 and unlikely to resign with the team that was too cheap to pay him for his prime. While the expected extension value would be about $10M per year rather than closer to the $7 expected through arbitration, it would also cover two more years. Those two are the expensive years. Based on recent ace, starting pitcher free agent signings, those years are more likely worth between $20M and $30M per season and they come with a much greater expense, generally another long term contract. For Kluber, a five to seven year deal after the age of 34 at an average value anywhere near $25M would be enough to wreck almost any team. This shows the value of signing early to the team as his last prime seasons (in his early 30’s) would keep him under team control for both seasons for the price of a single season otherwise.

Of course, all these inflated numbers assume that Kluber will not get seriously injured and stay at his current level of play over the duration. It is rare that a pitcher starts his career so late in life, so it is difficult to find comparisons, but there are a few. One such is Teddy Higuera, who pitched for the Brewers in the 1980’s. He pitched his rookie season at 27 and came in second for the Rookie of the Year, then came in second in the Cy Young voting in his second season. His numbers were comparable to Kluber’s over his first two years and he would ultimately go 94 and 64 with a 3.61 ERA in 1,380 innings through nine seasons. In addition, he missed one full season (1992) due to injury. This seems to be a fairly conservative estimate for Kluber’s career. Most pitchers miss at least a year to injury and starting so late means he is likely to have a short career.

Age really is the deciding factor in this case and the primary difference between the deals signed by Bumgarner and Sale and the one Kluber may be looking for. Although both would be avoiding arbitration and the first few years of free agency, Bumgarner’s first free agent season covered would have been in 2017, for which he will be paid $11.5M (Sale will be paid $12M for the same). In that season, Bumgarner will be right into his prime at 27 and Sale will be 28. In the equivalent year for Kluber, 2019, he will be 33 years old. Instead of being on his way up after leaving his arbitration years, he will be steadily on the way back down.

Another aspect to be considered is the team around him. The Indians are built to win right now and with the entire starting rotation and bullpen under team control through at least 2017  along with Yan Gomes, Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley, Carlos Santana, Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn that appears to be the Indians window to win a World Series. With that being the case, if they want to be as frugal as they have been over the past decade, the Indians could sign Kluber a season at a time through 2017, likely paying him less than a total of $15M for the three seasons. When the team starts to break up again in the coming years, the Indians would then be able to trade Kluber in his final year of team control and expect a pretty decent haul in return.

In the end, it is generally a bad idea to give a player a massive contract when you don’t have to, especially after he just had a season that will be almost impossible to repeat. While Kluber deserves some monetary compensation for his incredible 2014 season (this could mean paying him more than the minimum increase in 2015), he doesn’t deserve the kind of extensions that Sale and Bumgarner earned simply due to his age. While this argument can be reconsidered going into the 2016 season, for the moment, it would be a very poor decision to guarantee Corey Kluber more than he is already going to get.