NEWSLETTER
For a guy as good and as consistent as Kyle Hendricks to have the kind of month he’s had, it’s fair to surmise that multiple things are wrong. Sure, his style lends itself to some dingers now and then when he misses his spot, but what we’ve seen is a command-control guy serving up batting practice. There are clearly multiple issues.
Hendricks is working on it, and revealed after last night’s game that he’s had issues with tipping pitches in the past. He’s going to check it out and see if there’s something to it this time around, too, because he thinks there might be.
But, like I said at the top, it’s more than just one thing (Bastian): “At the end of the day, even if they know what’s coming, if you make a good pitch, you get bad contact. There’s just so much hard contact right now.”
Yes. There is:
The league leader – the bad kind – in barrels per plate appearance (and also barrels per batted ball event) is Kyle Hendricks. That means he's giving up the worst kind of contact the most frequently in all of baseball. pic.twitter.com/cyPfz7aFa6
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) April 29, 2021
Put it another way: given the quality of contact Hendricks has been giving up, batters are expected to be hitting .341 off of him. In an environment where league-wide batting average is down to like. 220. His xSLG is an unbelievable .658. He has, so far this year, turned the average batter into Ichiro with Barry Bonds’ power.
Again, for a guy whose bread and butter is contact management, things are a mess. Clearly. Tipping pitches? Yeah, probably. Stuff and movement not crisp? Yeah, probably. Mechanics a problem? Yeah, problem.
And maybe the biggest of all? The location has been terrible.
You don’t necessarily need the charts at this point to know that Hendricks is missing middle up too much (without going WAY up like he did so well last year), but there are charts nonetheless just to confirm. Bryan has the full pitch slate, none of which look like they’re going where they’re supposed to, and Jordan Bastian offers up just the sinker compared to last year. Notably, look at the 2020 big red spot down and away, where he likes to locate most often to righties, and look where it moves to in 2021 and be horrified:
https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/1387793441699008515
Here are heat maps for each of Kyle Hendricks’ pitches on hits allowed this year. I think it shows that hitters have been able to wait for Kyle to make a mistake, and that he’s done so often enough to warrant his ERA. So, so many middle third pitches. pic.twitter.com/7fe2CZyq2y
— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) April 29, 2021
Hendricks is also seeing wild changes in his pitch movement this year, which further indicates something is just off with his mechanics:
Thankfully, Hendricks is physically healthy, his velocity is normal, and he’s got a long track record of getting right. I wouldn’t say I’m worried at this point. But if so many things are off right now, it might take a little while yet for him to lock things back in. Step one, figure out about the pitch-tipping, and make a change. Step two, clean up the mechanics if that’s what is causing the location/movement issues. Step three, soft contact returns, yay!
