Kyle Hendricks hasn’t pitched since early July as a result of a pressure in his proper shoulder, and it seems as if his 2022 season is over. The Cubs right-hander informed reporters (together with MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian) that he’s making an attempt to get wholesome as a way to have a standard offseason and ramp-up interval for the 2023 season, and to that finish, Hendricks plans to restart a throwing program on the Cubs’ coaching complicated in Arizona this week.
Hendricks underwent an MRI earlier this month that didn’t reveal any structural harm, based on Chicago supervisor David Ross. Nonetheless, it appeared even on the time that Hendricks’ 2022 marketing campaign was most likely over, as Ross mentioned that getting Hendricks again this season wasn’t “a high precedence” in comparison with the bigger-picture want to ensure the veteran is wholesome.
As such, it seems to be like Hendricks will wrap up his ninth MLB season with a 4.80 ERA over 84 1/3 innings. This marks two underwhelming seasons in a row for Hendricks, who has a 4.78 ERA/4.62 SIERA in 265 1/3 frames because the begin of the 2021 marketing campaign. His once-elite stroll price fell to a still-decent 6.7% this 12 months, however mixed with an enormous enhance in hard-hit ball price, Hendricks’ low-velocity, contact-heavy arsenal wasn’t fooling many batters.
Whereas the 2020 season was solely 60 video games lengthy, Hendricks was nonetheless a succesful front-of-the-rotation starter as not too long ago as two years in the past, when he completed ninth in NL Cy Younger Award voting. Typically underrated as a key piece of the Cubs’ success during the last decade, Hendricks was a really strong member of the rotation from 2014-20, with a 3.12 ERA over 1047 1/3 innings of an old-school strategy that relied extra on command and delicate contact reasonably than missed bats. The 2016 season was a peak for Hendricks, each as a result of his league-best 2.13 ERA and his huge position within the Cubs’ World Sequence triumph.
With the Cubs now in a rebuild, it’s protected to guess that if Hendricks hadn’t been battling each efficiency and harm during the last two seasons, he would possibly very properly have joined the lengthy record of veterans traded away. Hendricks’ wage was additionally an enormous issue — 2023 is the ultimate season of the four-year, $55.5MM extension he signed in March 2019, and he’s owed $14MM for the 2023 season.
The Cubs even have a $16MM membership possibility on the right-hander’s companies for 2024, however at this level, it will seem to be Chicago will purchase that possibility out for $1.5MM except Hendricks can flip issues round subsequent 12 months. Or, if a bounce-back 12 months is within the playing cards, that possibility resolution may very well be within the fingers of one other crew, if the Cubs regarded to lastly commerce Hendricks in any case. Because it doesn’t seem to be Hendricks has a lot commerce worth at the moment, he’ll have to return wholesome and pitch properly within the first half of 2023 earlier than we get extra readability on his future both in Chicago or as a possible commerce chip.
