NEWSLETTER
Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs won a game started by Kyle Hendricks and closed by Adbert Alzolay. Factually, that is what happened.
I know. That’s wild.
Of course, that’s what would’ve been the expected outcome last season for two of the Cubs more trusted pitchers. Yet it is straight up notable this year, because the early results for both of them have been so very bad.
But what did that performance from Kyle Hendricks actually tell us about his potential going forward? Is he fixed? Is he permanently back in the rotation, and a trusted arm again? Eh, no. Probably not yet. Yesterday was more of a soft stepping stone than a grand re-opening. And it’s worth dissecting.
Kyle Hendricks
On the surface, Kyle Hendricks’ final line looks good enough with just one earned run on two hits over 5.0 IP, and he even struck out five batters (t-season high).
But on the other hand, walking four of 20 batters isn’t particularly inspiring, especially as it seemed to me that Hendricks had a lot more uncompetitive pitches than usual — pitches the Pirates could spit on right out of his hand (especially east-west)).
Historically, hitters have offered at 33.5% of pitches out of the zone against Kyle Hendricks. Last season it was 36.4% and this season, before yesterday, it was 37.2%. But on Sunday, the Pirates offered at just 26.7% of pitches out of the zone thrown by Hendricks, which is his lowest mark of the year (~t-3rd lowest since the start of last season).
The Pirates do have the third highest walk rate vs right-handed pitching this season (10.1%), but I still don’t think Hendricks had his sharpest command by any means, and it seems he’d partially agree.
“There were a couple of points there where I lost it and sprayed a couple of balls, but for the most part, I was in my mechanics,” Kyle Hendricks said via Cubs.com.
On the bright side, Hendricks’ velocity was fine and he did net six whiffs on his changeup. Plus, the high volume of groundballs and low rate of hard contact were both positives. He also just generally felt good about the outing: “I was feeling my lanes. I was back down in the zone a little bit. My changeups were down. So it’s a lot closer. That’s what it’s telling me. It’s just the consistency now.”
All that said, it feels really important to point out that the Pirates are literally the worst offense in MLB versus right-handed pitching this season.
28. Rockies: .241/.307/.370 (79 wRC+)
29. White Sox: .218/.279/.340 (77 wRC+)
30. Pirates: .214/.296/.313 (75 wRC+)
… And you can’t just hand wave that. If he didn’t find success yesterday against the Pirates there would’ve been a serious problem. And frankly, that’s why I’m not quite so excited about the future after yesterday’s bounce back outing. So where do the Cubs go from here?
The Cubs Rotation
If everyone were healthy (which is apparently a HUGE “if” this season), I could see the Cubs’ best five starters being Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Javier Assad, and Jordan Wicks.
And even with Wicks still out, there’s an argument to be made that Hayden Wesneski should be in the rotation over Kyle Hendricks. Because for as happy as I am to see Hendricks pitch well yesterday, that certainly wasn’t a dominant enough performance (against a brutally bad offense) to erase our memory of his first five starts. Maybe if he does that a a few more times, against some better teams, my confidence will change. But I’m just not there yet. Not when there are other quality options.
For now, I think Hendricks did enough to earn another start (that’s not really in question), especially while Wicks is out and Wesneski is so desperately needed in the bullpen. But the leash needs to stay short for now. I would love for Hendricks to be the guy he was last season (people too easily forget that he was pretty darn good!), but my heart is guarded. I need to see a lot more than we saw yesterday. But we’ll just take that one game at a time.
