Article: Away, Away, Away: How Kyle Hendricks Faded the League in Resurgent Season

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs' erstwhile workhorse almost had his career careen into what would have felt like a premature end. Instead, he reasserted himself, in the least conventionally assertive way possible.

The oldest orthodoxy in pitching is: away, away, away. Even Bob Gibson (one of history's most famous pitch-inside, intimidate them, own the plate hurlers) revealed in his large oeuvre of post-career pitching wisdom dispensed across multiple books, disclosed that he only came inside to set up batters. He got all his outs by attacking low and away. Zack Greinke opened up to Eno Sarris back in 2015 about his doubts that pitching inside has any real value. The reason the changeup and the slider exist is to create opportunities for pitchers to work opposite- and same-handed batters, respectively, away more effectively.

Since 2015, though, that orthodoxy has started crumbling. As Greinke observed in that interview with Sarris, hitters do tend to hit the ball hard when it's out over the plate, where they can extend their arms. Maybe that, verified by batted-ball data that is so ubiquitous these days, has led pitchers and their teams to change tack. Maybe it's more about the changing shapes and angles of modern pitching. Either way, though, pitchers are pounding away outside less and less often, over time.

Not even the softest-tossing starter in baseball was immune to the trend, for a few years. Kyle Hendricks is a dedicated and intelligent adapter. He evolves and tweaks things, and he does so systematically. Historically one of the most devout "away, away, away" guys in baseball, Hendricks changed up on the league from 2020 through 2022--literally, but also figuratively. He started trying to force hitters to cover the whole plate a bit more, and to get in where he could consistently induce a lot of weak contact.

As we all know, though, the results of that change in approach were mixed. Hendricks was superb in the COVID-curtailed 2020 season, but over the following two years, his ERA was 4.78, and he gave up a lot of hits and home runs. As you can see, after returning from the shoulder injury that ended his 2022 season, he left that experiment with abandoning the outside edge behind. He's back to what once made him dominant, but he's now working against the grain of the league's evolution. 

In fact, among the 375 hurlers who faced at least 200 batters in 2023, Hendricks worked Outside at the highest rate in the league. Even though his raw rates of working away were higher in his prime, he never led the league before now. The results steadily reinforced that approach, too. Batters had a .477 OPS against Outside pitches from Hendricks in 2023, the lowest of his career.

As those who watched him closely know, that's largely because Hendricks didn't only change where he pitched last season. He also rebalanced his pitch mix, in a significant way. Again, this is a pitcher who doesn't do anything without thought and purpose, and you can see the way his repertoire and approach have evolved by studying the way he deployed his arsenal on Outside pitches, specifically, in each phase of his career to date. From his debut in 2014 through 2019, when he made his switch to attack more often inside, he was pretty sinker-heavy, and he tried to use his cutter to draw 'X's on each side of home plate, as Greg Maddux used to describe it. He wanted hitters to have trouble guessing which way a pitch would move, even if they immediately spotted its location.

As he changed his location targets a bit in 2020 and up through 2022, he changed his mix, too. It was more four-seamers and more curveballs, as a share of all Outside pitches. He ratcheted up usage of the changeup away, but it was still just the plurality of those offerings, not the majority. He was trying to use the principles of command discipline now so widely accepted in the game. Pitch A will be easiest to command in Location X, its movement profile sets up Pitch B in Location Y, but don't try to throw Pitch A or Pitch C in Location Y, or God help you.

For most pitchers, that's probably sound thinking. Those pitchers pretty much all throw harder than Hendricks, though. Those pitchers pretty much all have worse feel and worse command than Hendricks has, too. As Hendricks got more confident and adroit in his manipulation of what are really two different changeups, and with negative feedback on some of those offerings when he tried to throw them right at the outer edge (with the slim margin for error that comes with a lack of velocity), he figured out that it was time to get back to throwing outside--but not the same way he used to do it.

When last he was perching such a high percentage of his pitches on the outer third and beyond, Hendricks was fastball-heavy, No more. He's in the business of driving hitters utterly insane, by throwing what look like meatballs on the outer half, where they can extend their arms and obliterate the ball. Instead, it's the changeup. He's pulling the string over and over, and it's working. 

None of that is to say that it will work identically well in 2024 as it did in 2023. Hendricks is a wonder, and a unique artist on the mound, but he's not immune to time, injury, or the pitfalls of being so far below the league average in the single statistic that drives so much of the modern pitching paradigm. Still, last year's major adjustments were notable, and they're a good reminder that some of the ancient wisdom about pitching is timeless.

What do you expect from Hendricks this year? How repeatable is his success? Let's discuss.

Research assistance throughout this piece provided by TruMedia tools.

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[Bertz]

I'll say that last year after his first couple starts, Hendricks' success felt pretty real and earned.  I think he got lucky with some at'em balls his first few starts, but quickly knocked off the rust and settled in.  The data backs this up too, from 6/28 onwards he had 18 starts with a 4.13 ERA and a 4.09 xFIP.  And as you mention there were real changes to velocity and approach (and obviously health) which make you think last year was pretty real and not just a dead cat bounce.

I understand the projection systems not liking him anymore, they shouldn't, but I also think he's the easiest call on the roster for exceeding those expectations.  Prime Kyle isn't walking through that door, but if he can be the #3 starter he was last year it makes this pitching staff pretty feel much more legitimate.

 

[We Got The Whole 9]

It sucks that we didn't get Suter. I think it would have been awesome to have them both, have some game where Kyle pitches 5 and Suter cleans up the rest and at the end of the shutout the average fb would be like 87 and that would be higher than the average EV against them.

 

Great article! From my own personal observation, for a couple years there it had seemed as if Kyle was trying to enforce "high heat" and got his ass handed to him quite a bit.