Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks has still not begun throwing in his recovery from a mid-season capsular tear in his shoulder, per Gordon Wittenmyer of NBC Sports. While the delay in his recovery is enough to cause some concern, Wittenmyer notes that there’s not yet reason to think that Hendricks won’t be ready for spring training. Hendricks was originally due to resume playing catch at the end of the season, but the plan is now to start that in November.
Hendricks posted a 4.80 ERA across 16 starts this season before going down with injury. Hendricks’ HardHit% soared in 2022, standing at 38.8%, well above his second highest mark of 33%, which occurred last season. As one would expect, that translated into a higher home run rate and Hendricks gave up almost one per start this season. It’s the second straight season that’s been the case, as Hendricks suffered from a lift in home runs on the way to a 4.77 ERA across 32 starts in 2021. Prior to that, Hendricks was an incredibly reliable arm for the Cubs, regularly hitting 30 starts and posting ERAs in the mid-to-lower threes.
While Hendricks has experienced some decline in recent years, he’s still a much-needed workhorse for the Cubs rotation. They’ll have veteran Marcus Stroman back next year as well as the impressive Justin Steele. Beyond that, Keegan Thompson, Adrian Sampson and Hayden Wesneski all showed varying degrees of promise to suggest they’ll feature in the rotation next season, but none can be reasonably pencilled in to make 30 starts. Steele, too, is no sure thing workload-wise having pitched a career high 119 innings in 2022, though the promise he showed in pitching to a 3.18 ERA with the peripherals to match suggest the Cubs will certainly be looking to get big innings out of him.
The uncertainty over Hendricks’ immediate future could provide further motivation for the Cubs to be active in the starting pitcher market this winter. A competitive Cubs team in 2023 probably already needed an arm or two in the rotation, and if Hendricks’ recovery is set back any further that need will only increase. Hendricks is owed $14MM in 2023, and has a $16MM team option for 2024 with a $1.5MM buyout.
He is playing plenty of “MLB The Show 2022” he is fine…Relax.
Hendricks vs Amir Garrett in an online MLB The Show game would be something…
He sucks
“Steele is also no sure thing workload-wise having pitched a career high 119 innings in 2022, though the promise he showed pitching to a 3.18 ERA with peripherals to match suggests the Cubs will certainly be looking to get big innings out of him.”
FIFY
“… They’ll have veteran Marcus Stroman back next year. Justin Steele impressed with a 3.18 ERA and similar peripherals. The Cubs will want more than his career high 119 innings in 2022. Beyond that, …”
That works too. The sentence the author wrote about Steele has some real grammatical issues with subject-verb agreement.
It seems as if this board makes light of Steele and what he did this season… his overall numbers are a bit skewed given his early season struggles and “nibbling”… Steele would be beyond frustrating with his two quick strikes and end with a 7+ pitch at bat because he nibbled. He turned the corner when Lester told him to just attack, stop wasting and looking for the perfect pitch. Not only did his pitch count go down and inning went up but his ks per 9 increased and walks decreased. He ended on a streak with an era below 1 and over 12 ks per 9… that isn’t just ace status… that’s elite!
Hendricks pitched to a Sub 3 era with Gomes behind the plate and that included his 3 inning shelling when he got hurt.
Maybe it was a fluke but it seemed like Hendricks and Gomes just jelled.
With that said, I think Hendricks was using spider tack and most likely is done pitching at an elite level.
Could be true, you always wonder when you see a player’s performance drop after a rule change or “enhanced enforcement”.
Thats insane, March/April of 2021 his ERA was 7.54, MLB started checking June 21 of 2021 and in July his ERA was 3.00. August and September he was horrible, it took a month before umpires figured out how to look at someone’s fingers? Maybe his injury progression started in August of 2021. Let’s just blindly accuse someone of cheating right?
If everyone is doing it, is it really cheating? It would honestly be foolish if a pitcher didn’t use spider tack when it was being completely overlooked.
With that said, yes, I believe Hendricks was using spider tack and I base that looking at his change up movement. Most pitchers used spider tack in their fingers to create more spin, I believe Hendricks put it in his palm which caused his change up to die.
Does Kyle Hendrick have trade value?
Not unless he comes back to a reasonable facsimile thereof.
If he hasn’t started even light tossing this is not a good sign. The Cubs have plenty of young arms and will sign more by ST. Hendricks might not be ready until July at this rate. The Cubs will have 8-9 with starting chances by ST.
If I’m Jed I wouldn’t count on him being ready. I’m sure they’d like to trade him, since they want to rid themselves of the stench of 2016.
Where’s Mike when Happ wins the Gold Glove? I’m curious if he still thinks he’s a “terrible” defender