Kyle Hendricks’ Tough Start – MLB Trade Rumors

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. He 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 $16.5MM 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…