Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, a week after lasting just five innings (and giving up seven runs) against the Diamondbacks in Arizona, Kyle Hendricks threw perhaps the finest game of his six-year career. Nine innings. No runs. Four hits. Eighty-one pitches, not one of them flying faster than 90 miles per hour and only 18 of them landing, unchallenged, outside of the strike zone. If Noah Syndergaard’s complete-game, 10-K, no-run performance against the Reds on Thursday — during which he hit the home run that won the game 1-0 — was the logical end of 2019’s high-strikeout, high-velocity environment, then Hendricks’ was its precise opposite: the least 2019 game of the year. That these two starts could come on consecutive days is why we love baseball; it’s a beautiful game.

If you are willing to accept a contextual definition of “struggled,” then Hendricks probably struggled most in the first inning (the other candidate is the fourth, about which I’ll say more later). He went 2-1 on the always-dangerous Matt Carpenter to lead off the game, then retired the Cardinal star on the fifth pitch of the sequence with a sinking fastball right down the middle. Nobody knew it at the time, but Hendricks had already thrown more than six percent of the pitches he’d throw in the entire game. It took him just five more pitches to close out the first inning — four to Paul Goldschmidt and one to Paul DeJong — and Hendricks was on his way.

The DeJong plate appearance was perhaps the most critical of the entire game for what it told Hendricks and catcher Willson Contreras about how the Cardinals would approach him on Friday. When Hendricks has struggled this year, it’s been when he’s forced into the strike zone late in counts when hitters know he’s got to be there. Eight-eight miles an hour, in that situation, is often just too easy for big-league hitters to hit. Against DeJong, though, Hendricks saw what would become a trend for the Cardinals throughout the game: A willingness to be aggressive early in the count. Hendricks was perfectly willing to play into it. After starting the first two hitters with at least two balls before first getting into the zone, Hendricks started 21 of the next 27 with a pitch in the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

The past weekend was a very good one for Kris Bryant. While helping the Cubs take two games out of three in Arizona, he sandwiched his second and third home runs of the season around a rally-sparking double. It’s the first time in nearly a year that the former MVP has connected for extra-base hits in three straight games, and after a season marred by left shoulder woes, a possible sign that his power is returning.

Facing the Diamondbacks’ Robbie Ray in the third inning on Friday night, Bryant hammered a 3-2 fastball over the left centerfield wall for a two-run homer:

The home run went an estimated 444 feet and had an exit velocity of 111.1 mph according to Statcast, making it Bryant’s hardest-hit homer since July 16, 2017 (113.0 mph off Ubaldo Jimenez). It’s also the third ball this year that Bryant has hit with an exit velocity of at least 110 mph, two more than all of last season, the least productive of his career.

Bryant’s second homer, a two-run opposite field shot off Luke Weaver, was less majestic (102.0 mph and an estimated 374 feet), but every bit as necessary in the Cubs’ 15-inning, 6-5 win:

The last time Bryant collected extra-base hits in three straight games was May 16-19 of last year, the last a date that figures prominently in our story. He had just two other streaks running at least that long in 2018, compared to six in each of the previous two seasons.

To review: from 2015-17, Bryant was one of the majors’ top players, batting .288/.388/.527; his slugging percentage and 94 homers both ranked 16th in the majors, while his 144 wRC+ ranked 12th, and his 20.6 WAR was third behind only Mike Trout (25.8) and Josh Donaldson (21.8). During that time, he won the NL Rookie of the Year and an MVP award, and helped the Cubs to three straight postseason appearances, including their first championship since 1908.

The first seven weeks of 2018 surpassed even that high standard (.305/.427/.583, 169 wRC+, eight homers), but Bryant’s production took a downturn after suffering a bone bruise in his left shoulder, which is believed to have happened when he slid headfirst into first base (!) on May 19 (not the first time he’s injured himself in such fashion). Though it would be just over a month before he went on the disabled list for the first of two stays totaling 57 days, he hit just .252/.338/.382 (96 wRC+) with five homers in 272 PA from May 20 onward, decidedly non-Bryant-like numbers. By Dr. Mike Tanner’s calculations, from the point of that May 19 date, Bryant’s exit velocity dipped by five miles per hour, and his average fly ball distance decreased by 28 feet.

After rest and rehab for his shoulder, Bryant declared in February, “I’m back to who I am,” but until he got to Arizona, his power and overall production had been similarly meager (.232/.364/.366, 102 wRC+). Even now, his .229/.353/.417 (108 wRC+) line isn’t particularly robust. He’s walking more often relative to last year’s overall numbers (12.1%, up from 10.5%) while suffering a fall-off in batting average on balls in play (.264, down from .342). His exit velocity — never his strong suit despite his power — is up relative to last year, but so is his groundball rate:

Thus far in 2019, Bryant has produced 75 batted balls, five short of the point where the stat starts to stabilize, so we can’t make definitive assertions, but one thing that stands out is that while his pull rate is about the same as last year, an increasing percentage of those pulled balls have been grounders, which are far less productive than pulled fly balls:

Even when Bryant does pull fly balls, he’s not getting typical results, though since we can literally count those times on one hand thus far — four of them according to our splits, which are based on Sports Info Solution data, but only three via Statcast’s data — that’s less important than the sheer drop in frequency. That two of those pulled fly balls were in Arizona, namely the homer off Ray and Sunday’s sacrifice fly off Matt Andriese, may be a sign he’s coming around.

Bryant has gone to the opposite field with more frequency and productivity than before, at least in the air, though it hasn’t come close to matching his results when he pulls the ball:

A few weeks ago, The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma noted that Bryant’s mechanics were out of whack, quoting scouts describing him as “lunging,” with one saying, “He’s falling all over the plate.” Via Sharma, from the start of 2016 to the day of the aforementioned shoulder injury, Bryant had slugged .731 on pitches Statcast defines as being over the heart of the plate (I get .728 using the same parameters). For the remainder of the 2018 season through April 25, the point prior to the Arizona series, he slugged just .474 on such pitches. With this weekend’s pair of homers, he raised that nearly-yearlong figure to .514; separating his full 2018 and ’19 seasons, the numbers are .558 and .615, respectively.

Beyond that, while he whiffed on 3.4% of such pitches last year, he’s up to 4.8% this year, 0.1% off the career high from his rookie season, before he successfully tamed his swing, but only one of this year’s 21 swings and misses from the heart of the plate has taken place since April 19, yet another good sign.

It would be premature to say that Bryant is back to where he was as a hitter, and it’s probably worth noting that even with Chase Field’s humidor in place, fly balls are traveling farther there this year than last (331 feet, up from 329), and farther than at Wrigley Field in either season (321 this year, 315 last year). Still, for a Cubs team that has been scoring 5.5 runs per game but is struggling to escape the pull of .500, the possibility that he’s turned the corner could be a major key in the NL Central race.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., 3B, Toronto Blue Jays
Level: Triple-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1   FV: 70
Line: 2-for-5, HR

Notes
The Blue Jays have an off day Thursday, so Guerrero will make his debut Friday at home against Oakland rather than play a road series at Lehigh Valley where I was hoping to see him this weekend, though this serves the greater, baseball-watching good. I don’t have too much to add to what we wrote for the Jays list aside from some ephemeral nuggets.

Guerrero came to camp heavy, and was visibly bigger than he was last fall. He had a strained patellar tendon last year, and an oblique strain this spring. Let’s hope these issues aren’t chronic and don’t cause him to prematurely slide down the defensive spectrum, though he’ll hit enough to render it moot even if it occurs.

After rehabbing in Dunedin to start the year, Guerrero joined Triple-A Buffalo on April 11 and took just one home plate appearance for the Bison before his promotion as they have mostly been on the road while he was with them, and had a home series against Scranton decimated by rain. The 38 games Vlad played for Buffalo were the fewest he spent at any affiliate. Pour one out for Bob Rich, Jr., I suppose — just wait until it thaws.

Pavin Smith, 1B, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level: Double-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: tbd   FV: 40
Line: 3-for-5, HR, SB

Notes
Like his college teammate Matt Thaiss, Smith had strong peripheral stats as an amateur but desperately needed a swing change in pro ball to hit for enough power to profile at first base. After slugging under .400 as a college hitter in the Cal League last year and looking overmatched in the Fall League, there’s been some movement in his batted ball profile early this season. After posting ground ball rates of 48.8% each of the last two seasons, Smith is lifting the ball more and his grounder rate is just 33% early on. It’s a tad too early to trust batted ball samples, but that’s a fairly striking difference. It’s still going to be a tough profile and we’re not huge Smith fans here at FanGraphs, but this might be a sign things are getting better.

Oscar De La Cruz, RHP, Chicago Cubs
Level: Hi-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: 15   FV: 40
Line: 6 IP, 5 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 8 K

Notes
This was De La Cruz’s second rehab start after returning from a PED suspension that dates back to last July. I saw one of his final spring training tune-ups, during which he was 92-94 with unusually precise command of a plus-flashing slider, and he’s only walked one batter over the two starts. His velocity has been all over the place throughout his injury-riddled career — 93-97 at his best, 88-91 at his worst — but 92-94 with command is fine. He seems like a reasonable candidate to contribute to the Cubs at some point this year, perhaps out of the bullpen if De La Cruz, who has never thrown more than 77 innings in a single season, is on some kind of innings limit.

Cody Bolton, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
Level: Hi-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: 31   FV: 35+
Line: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 1 R, 6 K

Notes
Bolton came into some new velo last year, had a strong first half, and then was shut down with a shoulder injury and missed the rest of the year. His early-season results indicate his stuff is back, and he’s only 20 and already at Hi-A. Sinker/slider types like this sometimes don’t hold their strikeout rates as they climb, but even if Bolton becomes a No. 4/5 starter (which is how his stuff grades out on paper) that’s a steal for a sixth rounder.

Adam Hall, SS, Baltimore Orioles
Level: Low-A   Age: 19   Org Rank: 11   FV: 40+
Line: 5-for-6, 2B, SB

Notes
Hall has been scorching since late last year. He slashed .378/.441/.500 in August and is at .365/.467/.429 so far this season. He’s continued to steal bases like he did late last summer, too. Of his 22 steals last year, 15 came in August. Hall has seven bags in 16 games so far in 2019. He’s a slash and dash type of hitter and that style of play works best against bad, lower-level defenses, which is part of why he’s got a .523 BABIP right now. That’s got to come down, but this is a strong start.

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Robbie Erlin, Tommy Hottovy, and Marcus Stroman — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

———

Robbie Erlin, San Diego Padres

“I started throwing my curve when I was nine. Everybody frowns upon that — throwing one that young — but I never had any problems. Basically, my dad put me on one knee and taught me. It was almost like casting a fishing reel. What that does is… when you throw a curveball, you want your elbow to come up a little bit. If your elbow is coming down to throw the curveball, you get exposed. That’s when it’s dangerous [health-wise].

“My dad pitched in high school — he was a righty — and he told me that’s how he was taught. So yeah, he put me on his knee and said, ‘Just flip it to me. Just work on spin. We’re not throwing it hard.’ Eventually I got the feel of it. I started throwing it in games — flipping it out in games — but only once in awhile. Not too much as a kid. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Heyward was a very good baseball player for a very long time. From 2010-2015, his 25 WAR was one of the top 20 marks in the game and in his final two seasons before free agency, his 10 wins was 10th in all of baseball. In his one season in St. Louis, Jason Heyward was worth 5.6 WAR. In three-plus seasons for Chicago, Heyward has been worth 4.6 WAR as he approaches the midway point of his $184 million contract. To say the contract hasn’t worked out ignores that the Cubs won a World Series in his first season with the club and have won 90+ games in the two subsequent seasons. Heyward hasn’t been a good value early on, but he trended upward slightly last season, hitting at an average level and producing at a above-average level overall when factoring in baserunning and defense. This season, Heyward has been one of the better hitters in baseball in the early going thanks to an a absurd 10 walks compared to just six strikeouts as well as new secret trick: hitting the ball hard.

We probably don’t need to go through all of Heyward’s history, but the table below shows that in his final year before joining the Cubs, Heyward hit the ball relatively hard and often on the ground while with the Cubs, Heyward got the ball in the air more, but hit the ball with less authority.

This season, Heyward is off to a great start with a 165 wRC+; his average launch angle is 18 degrees and his exit velocity thus far is 90.5 mph, per Baseball Savant. When we talked about the launch angle revolution and trying to get players who hit the ball hard on the ground to put the ball in the air more, Jason Heyward was a prime example of a player who might benefit. Heyward hit the ball pretty hard with the Cardinals, and most of the time it went on the ground. His ISO wasn’t anything superlative, but he hit the ball hard enough to make himself an above-average offensive player. Heyward did have the one year in 2012 when he hit 27 homers, but that has become an anomaly as his career has progressed. In the first 15 games this season, Heyward has a .255 ISO. Look at this 15-game rolling ISO chart and try to spot the places where Heyward has ever hit with this much power, even in a small sample.

There’s literally no 15-game period with the Cubs in which he’s hit for this much power. He had one, maybe two brief stretches with the Cardinals, he closed the 2013 season well, and had a handful of hot periods during the first three seasons of his career. Since the end of the 2013 season, a period now encompassing more than five seasons, Heyward has had a short stretch like this just a couple of times. His career ISO is .149; the league has averaged an ISO of .151 over that span. Heyward has been, at best, an average power hitter, and over the last few years, he’s been well below. That makes what he has done unusual so far. Of his five extra base hits this season, four have been homers; if a couple of those homers had been doubles, we’d be looking at something more reasonable, though Heyward’s .367 xwOBA indicates he’s still been hitting the ball well, regardless of how many balls have gone over the fence.

What’s even more striking than Heyward’s power output is his discipline. Heyward has walked in 10 of his 63 plate appearances and struck out just six times. He has long been a player who has walked a lot while striking out at a rate better than league average, but this walk rate is one unseen since before his 2015 in St. Louis.

Heyward’s changes in walks and strikeouts are fueled, perhaps unsurprisingly, by swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone and more pitches in the zone.

As he has swung at more pitches in the zone, he’s making contact on more of those pitches as well. One notable part of the graph above is the contact percentage out of the zone. While Heyward has swung at considerably fewer pitches outside the strike zone, he’s missed on those swings at a higher rate. This might suggest that those pitches outside the zone aren’t pitches that are close resulting in weak contact, but rather are pitches where he is actually fooled. Given that his contact rate in the zone has gone up, it’s possible Heyward is simply swinging a bit harder, or more comfortably, at pitches he feels he can drive. That brings us back to launch angle.

Looking purely at average launch angle can be a bit deceiving at times. As the table at the beginning of the post indicates, Heyward did a better job of getting the ball in the air, but he was a much worse hitter. Launch angle charts can help provide some insight into why. First, look at this chart from Heyward’s year in St. Louis, from Baseball Savant.

That huge needle at -25 degrees represents a ton of ground balls that resulted in basically no hits. Then we see a bunch more batted balls from negative 20 degrees though positive 25 degrees with a decent number of hits. Then we see a tiny blip at 40 degrees and another small one at around 60 degrees, basically representing infield fly balls. Heyward was successful above because he hit the ball hard. The graphs below show the Cubs years when Heyward got the ball in the air a little more, but didn’t hit it hard and got poor results.

From 2016 through 2018, there is a massive spike at negative 25 degrees and a lot more negative numbers. There are a few more balls between zero and 20 degrees compared to what we saw in 2015, but not measurably so. We then see an uptick at the higher levels when Heyward was popping balls up; his infield fly percentage was over 18% in each of the past two years, the worst in the majors among the 165 batters with at least 900 plate appearances. Exchanging a few ground balls for infield flies might be a good way to see your average launch angle rise, but it doesn’t make for a better hitter.

It is very early, but Heyward isn’t hitting as many ground balls or infield flies, instead hitting balls much more likely to land for hits or home runs. It’s possible what we are seeing is just a blip and Heyward will revert back to the average hitter he was last year, or regress further. It’s also possible that among all of Heyward’s hitting tweaks over the last decade and improved health, he’s finally found something that can turn his hard-hitting ground ball tendencies into a launch angle converted power hitter. The Cubs tried to tap into Heyward’s power when he first arrived by changing his swing, but a swing designed to turn on inside pitches plus a wrist injury just made Heyward a poor hitter. He has slowly improved the last few seasons, and he’s off to a great start this year. He’s finally hitting the ball hard, again, and if he can keep putting the ball in the air on strikes in the zone, he just might hit well enough to make opting out of his four years and $86 million a consideration instead of a complete non-starter.

Javier Baez is not Vladimir Guerrero. Baez struggled before his breakout last season at 25; by that age, Guerrero had already established himself as one of the game’s great players. Even including Baez’s leap forward last year, Guerrero struck out about a third as often as Baez has and walked nearly twice as much. He had double the WAR though his age-25 season and 55 more homers. This isn’t meant to denigrate Baez. Vladimir Guerrero was a young star on the way to the Hall of Fame while Baez is an exciting young player with one really good season and some unique, dazzling skills. What brings the two players together is a swing Baez made on Monday against Jameson Taillon and the Pirates.

Javier Baez swung at a bad pitch, a pitch so bad the ball bounced in front of the plate, but he made contact, and the ball made its way to the outfield. Baez reached base with a single. Here’s another view a little bit closer:

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Corbin Burnes, Ty Buttrey, and Steve Cishek — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

———

Corbin Burnes, Milwaukee Brewers

“Coming out of high school I was mainly fastball-curveball-changeup. When I got to college, my coach approached me and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about throwing a slider?’ I was all for it. My fastball had a little bit of cutting action, so if we could kind of extend that cut, it would make for a good deception pitch off my fastball.

“I’ve tinkered with grips a little over the years. What I’ve come to is basically … it’s like my four-seam fastball, but with a little pressure adjustment. Originally it was going to be more of an extended cutter — we were going to try to keep it hard — but the more I threw it, the more it turned into a slider. That was more natural for me. Read the rest of this entry »

The outbreak of extension fever might now be classified as a pandemic. Tuesday brought news not only of Jacob deGrom’s four-year, $120.5 million deal for 2020-23 (bringing his total take over the next five seasons to $137.5 million) but also of that of Kyle Hendricks. The 29-year-old righty has agreed to a four-year, $55.5 million extension with the Cubs for that same four-year period, buying out his final year of arbitration eligibility and what would have been his first three years of free agency at a rather club-friendly price.

Hendricks has been a reliable mid-rotation presence since joining the Cubs in July 2014; the former eighth-round pick out of Dartmouth had been acquired from the Rangers at the July 31 deadline just two years earlier in exchange for Ryan Dempster. He provided his share of magic in Chicago’s epic 2016 season, leading the NL in ERA (2.13), ranking fourth in FIP (3.20), and seventh in WAR (4.1), then placing third in the NL Cy Young voting behind Max Scherzer and teammate Jon Lester. That October, Hendricks posted a 1.42 ERA in five postseason starts, though only twice was he allowed to go even five full innings; his best outing was a 7.1-inning shutout of the Dodgers in the NLCS clincher. In 2018 he threw a career-high 199 innings and delivered a 3.44 ERA, 3.78 FIP, and 3.5 WAR, numbers that respectively ranked 13th, 12th, and 11th in the league. For the 2015-18 period, his 3.14 ERA ranked 14th in the majors, his 13.3 WAR 19th, his 3.54 FIP 28th.

Hendricks has done this not by overpowering hitters but by limiting hard contact, generating a steady stream of groundballs, and rarely walking hitters. Via Pitch Info, his average fastball velocity — whether we’re talking about his four-seamer, which in 2018 averaged 87.7 mph and was thrown 17.5% of the time, or his sinker, which averaged 87.1 mph and was thrown 44.3% of the time — was the majors’ lowest among qualified starters, about two clicks slower than runner-up Mike Leake for either offering. He accompanies those pitches with an excellent changeup, which in 2018 generated a 19.8% swinging strike rate and just a 36 wRC+ (.180/.201/.288) on plate appearances ending with the pitch. According to Statcast, the 85.2 mph average exit velocity he yielded ranked in the 92nd percentile, and his hard hit rate of 30.6% in the 83rd percentile.

Hendricks is already signed for 2019 at a salary of $7.405 million. Under the terms of the new deal, he’s guaranteed $12 million in 2020, and then $14 million annually from 2021-23. If he finishes second or third in the Cy Young balloting, his base salaries for each season thereafter increase by $1 million; if he wins the award, they increase by $2 million. He has a $16 million vesting option for 2024 based upon a top-three finish in the Cy Young voting in 2020 and being deemed healthy for the 2021 season; if it doesn’t vest, it becomes a club option. Per the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the deal can max out at $78.9 million.

(I’m not quite sure how he arrived at that figure, both with respect to the decimal and the slim possibility of multiple Cy Young results that as I understand it, would push his value even higher. Imagine him winning the 2020 Cy Young award — go on, I’ll wait — thereby making each of the next three years worth $16 million and vesting the $16 million option for 2024; that’s $12 million plus four times $16 million, or $76 million all told. If he wins again in 2021, he’s banked $28 million, and then his salary should escalate again, to $18 million for at least the next two seasons, which pushes his total to $80 million even if the vesting option remains unchanged.)

Escalators aside, Hendricks’ four-year, $55.5 million guarantee looks rather light when compared to the four-year, $68 million free agent deal that Nathan Eovaldi, who’s also 29, inked with the Red Sox in December and the four-year, $68 million extension Miles Mikolas, who’s 30, signed earlier this month; the latter covers 2020-23 as well and buys out just one year of free agency. Mikolas was the most valuable of the three in 2018, producing 4.3 WAR in 200.2 innings, but in 91.1 previous major league innings before going to Japan, he was below replacement level (-0.2 WAR). Eovaldi produced 2.2 WAR in 111 innings last year for the Rays and Red Sox, but over the 2015-18 period produced just 6.1 WAR because he missed all of 2017 and time on either side of that due to his second Tommy John surgery. Expand the window back to 2014, when Eovaldi set a career high with 3.3 WAR and Hendricks had 1.6 in a 13-start rookie showing, and the gap closes, but it still favors Hendricks, 15.0 to 9.4.

What’s done is done; the question is what the three players will do going forward. Towards that end, Dan Szymborski provided ZiPS projections for the trio:

Even while excluding the upcoming seasons of Hendricks and Mikolas, which project to be the most valuable, to focus on the four-year deals, both project better than Eovaldi due in part to the latter’s injury history; ZiPS projects him for a maximum of 110.2 innings (2019) and a four-year total of 411, compared to 602.2 for Hendricks and 587 for Mikolas. Hendricks projects as the most valuable over the four covered years, yet he’s being paid the least, and the one year of arbitration eligibility doesn’t explain the difference , particularly given that Mikolas’ deal covers three years of arb-eligibility.

(As multiple readers have reminded me, Mikolas’ initial contract included language that made him a free agent following the 2019 season, not subject to the arbitration system.)

Even if I place all three on an equal footing by prorating their projections to a flat 180 innings per year — a level Hendriks has reached three times in the majors, Eovaldi and Mikolas just once (twice if you count his 2017 season in Japan) — the Cubs’ righty gets the performance edge, which only underscores the discrepancy in pay:

Even tossing that optimistic scenario aside, reminding ourselves again about Hendricks’ arb-eligible year, and foregoing any assumptions about inflation, we can understand that his contract comes out to about $5 million per win, at a time when we’re debating whether $8 million or $9 million per win is the right assumption. That’s a very club-friendly deal, to say the least.

Hendricks’ deal guarantees that at least one member of this year’s Cubs rotation (which ranks 10th in our depth charts) will be around in 2021, barring a trade. Cole Hamels will be a free agent after this season, and Yu Darvish, whose first year of a six-year, $126-million deal was an injury-shortened mess, can be if he chooses to opt out after the season, which seems like a long shot. Jose Quintana has a very affordable $10.5 million option for 2020, while Lester is signed through 2020 with a $25 million mutual option that can vest if he throws 200 innings in 2020 or 400 innings in 2019-20. Tyler Chatwood is signed through 2020 as well, but he was so bad last year that he doesn’t even project to be part of this year’s starting five, so who knows what happens down the road.

It’s not hard to understand why the Cubs want to keep Hendricks around, particularly given the glowing words team president Theo Epstein used in discussing the extension (“a wonderful representative of the whole Cubs organization… someone who is incredibly dependable, trustworthy, hardworking, thoughtful”). And it’s not hard to understand why Hendricks wants to stick around, given how strong the team has been during his tenure. Still, in light of the prices being paid elsewhere for players foregoing free agency, it’s not hard to think he could have done better, either.

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jon Duplantier, Carl Edwards Jr., and Sal Romano — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

——

Jon Duplantier, Arizona Diamondbacks

“I learned my curveball in college. Rice is a big breaking ball school — at least it was when I was there — and depending on where you are, you call it a different thing. It’s a spiked curveball, but I know that at Southern Miss, they call it a Rice slider. Essentially, it’s just a concept where you’re looking for this general break. You spike the curveball, with the idea being that you want something hard, with depth.

“My freshman year, I threw a slurve. The velocity on it was fine — it was 76-78 [mph] — but I would lose feel for it every now and then. When I’d lose feel for it, teams would start sitting on my heater. Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Duensing’s future in the game was tenuous when I talked to him in June 2016. Struggling with the Orioles after being cut loose by the Twins and Royals, he was on the brink of being sent to Triple-A. Moreover, he was flirting with baseball oblivion. And he knew it. As Duensing told me at the time, “If the Orioles send me back down… I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to talk to my family.”

Thirty-three months and 125 big-league appearances later, the resilient reliever is proof that lefties really do have nine lives. His career may well be dog-eared — Duensing turned 36 last month — but he’s nonetheless still pitching.

I asked the southpaw — after first reminding him of our 2016 conversation — how that’s come to be.

“Good question,” responded Duensing, who is heading into his third season with the Chicago Cubs. “I really don’t know, to be honest. But if anything sticks out, I guess it would be that we made it to the playoffs after I ended up with Baltimore. Getting that sense of winning again kind of rejuvenated me.”

The five previous seasons had been difficult. Not only had he gone from starter to middling reliever during that stretch, he did so on a Twins team that lost 90-or-more games four times. His body was willing, but his mind wasn’t in the right place. Read the rest of this entry »