It isn’t very often that you see a twenty-six-year-old Dartmouth graduate draw comparisons to Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux. But every fifth day in Chicago, the improbable becomes seemingly more likely.
If you bumped into him on the street, odds are you wouldn’t recognize Kyle Hendricks. There’s nothing flashy about him. He throws with a normal delivery; no quirks, just results. His fastball usually sits at a comfortable 88 miles per hour. With a limber 6’3” frame, he looks less like a major league pitcher and more like a young, new hire at your local Chase Bank, ready to help you set up a savings account.
To many, he may just seem like a fifth starter, blending in and finishing out the year by doing his part behind a team full of All-Stars and getting ready for a playoff campaign. But for the invisible-turned-visible Hendricks, there’s a lot of excitement in store as the Cubs come down the home stretch. Hendricks – whether baseball knows him or not – should be the undeniable favorite to win the Cy Young Award this season.
Nobody saw him coming, but he’s arrived. At the start of the season, and still to this day, so much of the attention placed on the Cubs’ rotation has been fixated on the front half. Power arms like Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester and John Lackey are the first people you think of when you hear the words “Cubs rotation,” but “The Professor” has efficiently out-pitched them all.
Right now, Hendricks has the lowest ERA in Major League Baseball at 2.03 and is coming off a near no-hitter in St. Louis. The next closest to him is Noah Syndergaard of the Mets at 2.48 and Cubs teammate Jon Lester, who sits at 2.51. Hendricks is 15-7 and is the best pitcher on arguably the best team in baseball.
The stats are incredible, and he’s doing it at an unprecedented value to the Cubs. The righty is only making $541 thousand this year, a staggeringly low number in comparison to how much former Cy Young winners Clayton Kershaw and Arrietta make, which is about $30 million and $10.7 million, respectively. Though his monetary value serves little purpose to his Cy Young argument, it remains impressive that Hendricks is performing so well given his salary.
At the beginning of this season, I don’t believe anyone had Hendricks on their short list for the Cy Young. Now, a soft-tossing righty, who passed up being drafted out of high school to get an Ivy League education, could hold the title of National League’s best hurler. He prevents hitters from squaring the ball up, as he has the best soft contact ratio in the league, but he also strikes out a fifth of the batters he faces.
All baseball aspects set aside, I think the thing that makes Hendricks truly great is the fact that he makes it look so effortless. He makes me feel like I could go out there and get major league hitters out. His humility and team-conscious attitude make it hard to root against him.
For now, the only things he’ll be setting up are strikeouts and inning-ending double plays. As far as that savings account goes, he might be looking to set one of those up for himself in the near future, not only for his new contract, but also for a postseason’s worth of memories.
