Cubs' Kyle Hendricks is having a tough start to the season

Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks.

Few players have had a more difficult start to 2024 than Kyle Hendricks. The Cubs righty has been rocked for 24 runs over his first 17 innings and has surrendered an MLB-high seven home runs.

Hendricks has allowed more than a run per inning in each of his first four appearances, only completing five innings once.

That’s a far cry from his resurgent showing last season. After consecutive seasons with an ERA near 5.00 in 2021-22, the veteran sinkerballer rebounded with a strong 3.74 mark. Aside from a six-week stint on the injured list, Hendricks had a strong year.

It was a fairly easy call for the Cubs to exercise a $16.5M team option for 2024. While it didn’t always seem as if things were trending in that direction, Hendricks’ platform showing was impressive enough that the option was a straightforward decision by the time it was up for consideration.

There’s still plenty of time for him to turn things around, but this clearly isn’t the opening the former ERA champ and the Cubs were expecting. Hendricks’ starts have come against the Rangers, Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks. They’re all above-average to excellent offensive teams, so it isn’t as if the Cubs have faced an easy set of opponents.

Still, this is the worst four-start stretch of Hendricks’ 11-year MLB career in terms of run prevention. He has typically been a slow starter — his career ERA in March/April is more than a run and a half higher than in any other month — but this is an especially rough few weeks.

It’s difficult to know how much emphasis to place on any player’s first couple weeks of the season, especially ones at an extreme. The Cubs surely don’t want to overrate what amounts to a 17-inning sample. Hendricks is a particularly tough pitcher to evaluate because he’s an anomaly in the modern game.

He had an excellent seven-year run to start his career behind top-of-the-scale command and an elite changeup to overcome well below-average velocity. Over the past three-plus years, his results have been less consistent.

The velocity and movement profile on Hendricks’ pitches this year isn’t much different than where it was in 2023. His changeup isn’t missing quite as many bats, but his game has never been built on swing-and-miss totals. The far bigger issue has been the damage Hendricks is allowing on contact. Beyond the homers, opponents are hitting almost .400 on balls in play — nearly .100 points higher than the league average.

Both the home runs and BABIP will come down to some extent. Hendricks certainly isn’t going to continue running an ERA above 12.00. Yet it also seems that last year’s sub-4.00 mark was probably anomalous. Hendricks surrendered just 0.85 home runs per nine last season but was in the 1.6 HR/9 range in both 2021 and ’22.

Maintaining last year’s success keeping the ball in the yard was always going to be a tough task. Even if his home run rate settles back into the 2021-22 range, Hendricks would project for an ERA approaching 5.00.

That could eventually force the coaching staff to consider moving him out of the rotation. They’re not at that point yet. The Cubs list Hendricks as their probable starter for Sunday’s series finale with the Marlins. That’ll be by far the weakest lineup against which he’s gotten the ball this year. Manager Craig Counsell indicated yesterday the Cubs weren’t considering skipping that start.

“I think frankly, all of our pitching stuff is we’ve got to get through every day,” Counsell told reporters (link via Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune). “And then we’re in a tough enough spot, right? We’ve just got to get through the day and then reevaluate it and make an assessment going forward. We’re going to need Kyle’s innings in his next start.”

That could lead the Cubs to proceed with a six-man rotation for the time being. Jameson Taillon has been reinstated from his season-opening injured list stint and will take the ball Friday. He slots back into a starting staff that also includes Shota Imanaga and Jordan Wicks.

If the Cubs wanted to go back to a five-man rotation, swingman Javier Assad and rookie Ben Brown would be the straightforward candidates for a move to the bullpen or (in Brown’s case) back to Triple-A Iowa. Yet they’ve each pitched well in the early going. Assad has allowed only four runs through 16 2/3 innings. Brown has allowed eight runs — six of them in a rocky first start — over his first 16 1/3 frames with a solid 23.4% strikeout rate.

The Cubs have been without ace Justin Steele since he left his Opening Day start with a hamstring strain. He’s coming off a recent 25-pitch bullpen session but won’t be back in an MLB game until sometime next month. That could buy the coaching staff time to stick with a six-man rotation or temporarily bump Brown out of the mix.

If everyone else is healthy by the time Steele comes back, they might face a tougher decision on whether to continue giving Hendricks the ball every fifth day.

Chicago is midway through a stretch of 10 consecutive game days. They’re off next Monday, their only reprieve before they play 19 in a row through May 8. After his start against Miami, Hendricks would be in line for matchups against the Red Sox and Brewers if the Cubs stay on a six-man trajectory.

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