Chicago Cubs right-hander Kyle Hendricks knew he was out of sync from the onset of his start Wednesday.
Rushing to the plate. No fastball command. It all quickly put Hendricks in a tough spot. Five of the first Pittsburgh Pirates reached base against Hendricks. Three scored on a home run he surrendered to outfielder Ben Gamel.
Hendricks’ outing didn’t get much better from there, putting the Cubs in a bad spot en route to a 6-2 loss at PNC Park.
Hendricks and catcher Willson Contreras turned to his secondary pitches in hopes they would be more effective than his fastball. That didn’t work either.
“It’s just trying to find that timing,” Hendricks said. “Nothing’s looking the same, everything’s looking different coming out of your hand. It’s not tracking, it’s not on the right lines. So you’re trying to find it — find your timing, focus on the glove, get the ball down, that kind of thing. But everything was up. Nothing was playing off of each other.”
Too many pitches were balls out of hand, and it wasn’t just one pitch type. He struggled to command all four in his repertoire — four-seam fastball, sinker, changeup and curveball. Pirates hitters weren’t challenged enough around the zone, and they capitalized on his misses.
Contreras believes they followed the scouting report right away instead of doing a better job getting Hendricks’ fastball established.
“During the game, we’re trying to get him back on track, but sometimes the feeling is not there and you’ve got to battle with what you have,” Contreras said. “I think the pitch selection wasn’t the best.”
Hendricks tried to use warmup pitches before each inning to tweak something and get on track. Nothing seemed to pan out. The second inning was Hendricks’ only clean frame, getting a groundout and two strikeouts. That mojo didn’t last long, however. The Pirates tacked on two runs in the third on Kevin Newman’s two-run triple off the right-field wall.
“Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t, and today it definitely didn’t,” Hendricks said. “Everything was out of whack.”
Hendricks’ four walks were his most since June 21, 2018. It tied his career high, previously done six times.
The Cubs’ best chance to overcome Hendricks’ rough outing came in the fifth. They loaded the bases with one out to bring up Contreras, who hit a 435-foot solo home run in his first at-bat. Contreras turned on an inside fastball but hit into an inning-ending double play.
Bench coach Andy Green took over in the second inning for manager David Ross, who was under the weather.
“He’s going to make 30-plus starts for us this year if everything goes according to plan in the regular season, so he’s not going to have it every single time out, especially when you talk about a quick spring and what guys have been through,” Green said of Hendricks. “It was just one of those days where he just wasn’t settled, and you run into that from time to time.”
After delivering a vintage performance opening day, Hendricks didn’t make it out of the fourth Wednesday, pulled after Newman’s triple. Hendricks’ 3⅔ innings — in which he allowed six runs on seven hits — were eerily reminiscent of his April 2021 and the struggles he battled during the final two months of the season too.
Even Hendricks acknowledged how Wednesday was very similar to his career-worst season last year and his bad parts of spring training.
“When it’s good I was giving myself more time over the rubber,” Hendricks said. “I was doing it out of the stretch especially, just pulling off, being way too quick. Not establishing the fastball, walks, bad walks, and just bad pitches over the middle of the plate.”
The focus shifts to making sure Wednesday’s performance doesn’t snowball into his next start and beyond. His outing will look much different if it becomes a one-off aberration rather than the beginning of April struggles Part 2. That means resetting between now and his next start Monday against the Tampa Bay Rays at Wrigley Field.
Hendricks wants to get back to simplifying things and locate his fastball at the bottom of the zone, which was a focal point during camp. Essentially he doesn’t want to try to do too much. The Cubs need this to be the type of bad start that nearly every pitcher experiences occasionally. Their rotation looks a lot different if Hendricks isn’t right.
“I don’t know if I was doing too much to get out of it, but I know what it is to establish it,” Hendricks said. “Put in the work and put the right focus in this week.”
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