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Kyle Hendricks hasn’t pitched since early July resulting from a pressure in his proper shoulder, and it seems as if his 2022 season is over. The Cubs right-hander instructed reporters (together with MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian) that he’s attempting to get wholesome with the intention to have a traditional offseason and ramp-up interval for the 2023 season, and to that finish, Hendricks plans to restart a throwing program on the Cubs’ coaching advanced in Arizona this week.
Hendricks underwent an MRI earlier this month that didn’t reveal any structural harm, based on Chicago supervisor David Ross. Nevertheless, it appeared even on the time that Hendricks’ 2022 marketing campaign was most likely over, as Ross stated that getting Hendricks again this season wasn’t “a prime precedence” in comparison with the bigger-picture want to verify the veteran is wholesome.
As such, it appears 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 for the reason that begin of the 2021 marketing campaign. His once-elite stroll charge fell to a still-decent 6.7% this 12 months, however mixed with an enormous improve in hard-hit ball charge, 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 just lately 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 method that relied extra on command and delicate contact moderately than missed bats. The 2016 season was a peak for Hendricks, each resulting from his league-best 2.13 ERA and his massive function within the Cubs’ World Collection 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 effectively have joined the lengthy checklist 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 look like 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 choice may very well be within the arms of one other group, if the Cubs appeared to lastly commerce Hendricks in any case. Because it doesn’t look like Hendricks has a lot commerce worth at present, he’ll have to return wholesome and pitch effectively within the first half of 2023 earlier than we get extra readability on his future both in Chicago or as a possible commerce chip.
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