NEWSLETTER
In what may be a new normal for a guy who was previously known for his steadiness, Kyle Hendricks has had a season of extremes.
By which I mean we can classify six of his starts as excellent (3 ER over 39.0 IP against the Padres, Cardinals, Brewers, Diamondbacks, and Pirates) … and eight of his starts as pretty darn horrible (38 ER over 36.1 IP against the Rays, Brewers, White Sox, Reds, Braves, Pirates, and Diamondbacks). Unfortunately for analytical purposes, there hasn’t been much of a trend in any one direction. He’ll be good for a couple starts, bad for a few, good for one, and so on. Oh, and all of that comes after a brutal finish to the 2021 season (7.96 ERA over his final nine starts) and a period of dead arm earlier this month.
Point here being: it’s been a periodically rough year for the formerly dependable Cubs starter.
Despite all that uncertainty and unevenness, Hendricks’ name apparently still carries some weight around the league with the Trade Deadline approaching.
Jon Heyman joined The Mully and Haugh Show on 670 The Score this week (around 7:25 am if you’re looking for the exact exchange), declaring, much to my surprise, that Kyle Hendricks actually will be coveted by teams in the upcoming trade market:
“I do expect there will be a market for Kyle Hendricks. I’d put him on that list with [David] Robertson, [Willson] Contreras, and the other Cubs players who’ll be out there in the market and pursued by other teams.”
Not only is Heyman reporting some general market interest in Hendricks, he’s got Hendricks listed alongside the two players virtually certain to be traded by the Cubs over the next month.
Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Hendricks name pop up as a potential trade piece. For example, The Athletic ranked him 10th on a list of starting pitchers who could be traded at the coming deadline.
But I never really bought it. Mostly because Hendricks simply wasn’t pitching well enough to be traded for any kind of real value.
I didn’t doubt there’d be some team out there looking to grab Hendricks for a pittance, but I also didn’t (and still don’t) think the Cubs would necessarily want to trade him just to trade him. If you’re not getting a legitimate prospect back (or some comparable package of players), then it might not be worth the loss of goodwill, leadership, whatever value he provides a young and up-and-coming pitching staff (Keegan Thompson, Justin Steele, Caleb Kilian, etc.), and the ability to possibly still be a useful back-of-the-rotation arm.
Also complicating matters is that Hendricks isn’t a rental. He comes with a $14M price tag for 2023 (his age-33 season), plus a $1.5M buyout in 2024 on a $16M club option. In certain circumstances, extra years of control are a plus, but for Hendricks at this stage in his career, the “value” of that 2023 season is pretty unclear (and is more likely a negative to his trade value than a positive). His playoff experience will interest some teams for a 2022 stretch run, no doubt, but keeping him around for another relatively pricey season beyond that as he continues to age is an entirely different conversation.
The broader point here is that given his age, contract, up-and-down performance, and recent shoulder fatigue, trading Kyle Hendricks won’t be easy. And because it won’t be easy – which means the return would be minimal – the Cubs may prefer to retain the value he does provide the clubhouse in leadership and experience.
Buuuuuuuuuut maybe that is selling the situation short? Maybe we’re too close to this thing?
Think about what we have seen around the league before; what CAN happen to an aging, perhaps even declining, former stud with an excellent postseason track record when he gets new life with a new team in the middle of a playoff race. Sometimes these guys are reinvigorated.
Consider an example from the Cubs’ own recent past.
Before coming to the Cubs in August of 2018, Cole Hamels had a 4.72 ERA (5.20 FIP) over 20 starts as a 34-year-old starter with the Rangers. And that was following a brutal final stretch in 2017, when he earned a 5.66 ERA over 10 starts to end the season. Many thought he was just about toast. But after coming to the Cubs before that Trade Deadline, Hamels posted a 2.36 ERA over 12 starts down the stretch, reigniting some of his prior success, boosted by the importance of pitching when it actually mattered.
I’m not here to compare the careers or styles or production expectations for Kyle Hendricks and Cole Hamels. (Indeed, this Hendricks-Hamels discussion was initially brought up by Patrick Mooney of The Athletic on the podcast he does with Sahadev Sharma and our own Brett Taylor.) But you can see some of the parallels. Hendricks will still need to deliver a string of strong performances over the next month or so to make a trade worth it (for the Cubs or the acquiring team), since there are some ancillary considerations that I don’t think were there for the Rangers on Hamels. But it is possible that some contender will really want Hendricks for reasons they’ve come to internally. Heck, it could be something Hendricks would actually want at this point in his career, not that he’d say that publicly.
So I guess this is all a long way of saying, despite what we may have just assumed, Hendricks could be traded this season. It’ll require a good little stretch here, but, hey, he is coming off 7.1 scoreless innings in St. Louis. I’m sure that caught some attention. Those are the types of outings he still can have sometimes.
Maybe there really will be enough interest to generate a market at the Trade Deadline, and then the question is just whether the return is worth it to the Cubs to part with Hendricks at this time.
