Kyle Hendricks Takes a Hometown Discount
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:
| Year | Hendricks | Mikolas | Eovaldi |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 3.3 | 3.1 | 1.9 |
| 2020 | 3.2 | 2.9 | 1.8 |
| 2021 | 2.9 | 2.6 | 1.7 |
| 2022 | 2.7 | 2.4 | 1.6 |
| 2023 | 2.4 | 2.1 | |
| 4-year totals | 11.2 | 10.0 | 7.0 |
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:
| Year | Hendricks | Mikolas | Eovaldi |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 3.4 | 3.2 | 3.1 |
| 2020 | 3.5 | 3.3 | 3.1 |
| 2021 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| 2022 | 3.4 | 3.0 | 3.1 |
| 2023 | 3.2 | 2.8 | |
| 4-year totals | 13.4 | 12.2 | 12.3 |
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.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
In general I’d be inclined to agree with you but – I think given Hendricks’ soft-tossing status, even his past performance and projections might not have scored him a substantially bigger deal in FA. Keuchel obviously hasn’t (though we don’t know what he’s rejected, if anything). And there aren’t really that many contemporary precedents for a guy like Hendricks, who throws not-hard but gets elite results, but there is one – Jered Weaver.
Every pitcher is different and Hendricks certainly misses *more* bats than Weaver did, but – there might be a floor somewhere in there below which even a very talented soft-tosser becomes nigh-unplayable. As good as his results have been, I don’t think this is a totally crazy deal for Hendricks, given the market conditions and what gets paid (velocity, even in absence of longer-term results – see e.g., Eovaldi)
Doug Fister also briefly got excellent results without throwing hard before completely falling off a cliff.
Yeah – though he did also have that comeback with Boston. Fister’s issue was that he just couldn’t stay healthy anymore, mostly.
Yeah, but Fister is huge. He, like Chris Young, had the downward drive to their advantage.
Chris Young was one of the most extreme flyball pitchers in recent memory. During fister’s best years with the tigers, he was a very heavy ground ball pitcher. Their heights don’t seem to have resulted directly in any meaningful similarities in their production, unless you’re talking about extension and perceived velocity or something and I’m not sure we have the data on that for them, though I’d be interested if it exists
Yes, but I’m talking more about the downward angle on everything they throw and the massive extension they get. That is an advantage Hendricks will never have.
There is nothing “brief” about Hendricks performance. Over the past 5 years he has the 5th best ERA (3.07), behind only deGrom, Kershaw. Sale and Kluber. This looks more like a top of the rotation ace to me? But wait, he doesn’t throw 96 so he must not be any good. Golf has the right cliche for it, “It ain’t how, it’s how many”.
I wonder how much info arb guys are able to discern about their market value? For a guy with idiosyncratic skills like Hendricks, it must be really hard to get a confident estimate. He could bet on himself, decline the deal and hit FA, and in a year teams could either be champing at the bit to sign him or he could be the next Keuchel.
I think that variance and uncertainty works in the team’s favor for a guy in his late 20s whose results routinely exceed his stuff.
I not only agree with you, but also upvoted for correct use of “champing.”
If I had a sugar cube for every time someone gets that wrong…
Just neighing.
The question is always the same and so is the answer. Performance doesn’t count if you do not fit the template that the game has for each skill. A pitcher who gets hitter after hitter out with something other than high-octane gas and a crackling curve is treated the same as Goldschmidt or Hoskins, or in the case of a pitcher, who better than Keuchel to make that case. I think it is not unreasonable to speculate that if Hendricks, with his great record, fit that template he would be signing a much larger contract. They have to prove themselves every time out before they break the stereotype. For this reason I am rooting very strongly for Pete Alonso to disprove, yet again, this bias against R & R first basemen.
FYI, Jay, Mikolas’s original two-year deal specifically stated that he’d be a free agent afterward despite his low service time (same thing Yoenis Cespedes, I believe, had in his first MLB deal), so all four years bought out FA years.
Yea this is an important point, because Mikolas doesn’t come close to $68M on a contract if it’s covering 3 arb years. He was set for FA after the 2019 season as per his contract.
Hendricks willingly took less simply because there is less perceived upside at this point. Eovaldi and Mikolas are being viewed as late bloomers who have turned a corner, with fastballs that could remain effective with some velocity loss. Hendricks isn’t Maddux so if he starts to lose velocity we probably are looking at Jered Weaver again.
Whoops, you and aschrag83 are correct, I had overlooked that aspect of the deal and have corrected it above. I do think that while Mikolas does have more velocity, it’s worth noting in terms of a longer-range outlook that he doesn’t miss many bats; He had a slight edge on Hendricks in overall swinging strike rate (9.6% to 9.2%) but a lower K% (18.1% to 19.8%); the two were nearly identical in K-BB% (14.5% for MM, 14.4% for KH). If he can convert that velocity to more swinging strikes — something that Eovaldi, who has velo for days, has begun to do — his outlook improves, but let’s see it happen; right now I think the projections suggest they’re pretty similar. For that matter, let’s see him pitch 200 innings again, in this environment.
Scrolled down to state that Mikolas would not have been arbitration eligible for any of the years of his contract for precisely this reason. Good job!
Hendricks is also not a household name nationally so I doubt any baseball fan outside of Chicago really knows who he is. Couple that with his extra, extra soft-tossing style, it’s hard to imagine the other 29 GMs wanting to offer big dollars to a guy who can’t even throw a fastball by anybody in a big moment.
I think both parties did well- the Cubs continued to buy pitching and Hendricks got paid before his fastball declined even further.
You doubt any — not most, but any — baseball fan outside of Chicago really knows who he is?
I didn’t mean to trigger cub fans. I meant it’s a hard sell to a fan base to give a soft-tossing guy, who zero casual fans have heard of, a huge $100M deal.
I think your analysis is just wrong. Hendricks isn’t some under the radar pitcher. He was third in Cy Young voting and a post season stud for the Cubs in 2016. Almost all casual baseball fans watched game 7 of the 2016 World Series when Hendricks dominated. He hasn’t been as good since, but still been one of the better pitchers in the NL. He’s certainly well known throughout baseball.
I don’t think anyone is arguing he could have gotten $100 million, are they? The question is why $55m vs. say $70m.
Hendricks is a member of the family of a country, the one who has a baseball fan in the extreme left wing of Chicago. Some of your extra styles, which are easy to bang, it’s hard to imagine than the other 29 GMs to give big money to a guy who can not even throw someone’s ball in big moments.
I think that both sides did it – the youngsters continued to buy garbage and Hendricks paid it before the ball, they refused.
“The youngsters continued to buy garbage” is such a good phrase and it does encapsulate something for sure.
LMHAO!!!!
I suppose with a pitcher like Hendricks you are always wondering when the magic ends. Then you have either an innings-eater or a spot starter. I’d also throw in a Gio Gonzales reference. The market may not be as hot for starters who don’t look like they can be dominating.
It looks to me like Hendricks’ agent has read the writing on the wall re: aging pitchers, and advised his client accordingly.
It seems like in every article about an extension or signing the author talks about how it’s a bargain. How many more bargains can we talk about before adjusting our expectations? The $8/$9 million per win is clearly off IMO.
It was never accurate or useful in my opinion. For us fans and the bloggers who post these blog posts on here to do comparative talk yes, but for assembling a 25 man roster? No way a GM has ever considered the idea of “9 million per win”. There’s just no way that is helpful information to a front office IMO.
In this particular article there are two other very recent comps that price out at $6.8 million/WAR (Mikolas) and $9.7 million/WAR (Eovaldi).
There’s no question that any $/WAR estimate is a blunt instrument at best, and you can quibble over what the right price-per-win should be, but I don’t think the criticism is fair in this case. Hendricks is getting paid less than comparable guys with significant questions about their future performance.
It used to be $/WAR looking historically at what free agents produced vs what they were paid. And at the 8, 9 per range it was was a terrible deal for teams as there’s no way to build a winner unless you have big market budget and/or you get lucky and hit on most of your top prospects at the same time like the Cubs or Astros.
I’m sure it varies by team, but it seems like they value it closer to 6M per WAR with these extensions, then once inevitable injuries, sudden declines come into play it will drive it closer to the 8 number in the end.
But I think it’s more than that, because seemingly every article’s narrative is designed to convince the audience that each extension/signing is a team-friendly bargain.
This is the Kyle Hendricks of contracts. It’s… pretty good!
What I think Jay might be missing out on is that for whatever reason, teams are paying about the free agency level for extensions that don’t “buy out” a year. They may upgrade the current salary some, like Arenado’s, and Mikolas got a pretty big bump if I remember correctly. But the deGrom deal and this deal are way more team friendly, despite only buying out one arbitration year (also the Severino/Nola/Bregman deals, although that’s not a strict comparison).
I think there’s something going on here where that one arbitration year is getting valued very highly. It’s still a year where, if the player tears an everything, the player can be non-tendered. So if a player wants the stability of buying out an arbitration year, the cost to the player seems to be much higher than it should be. It’s just one year, after all. So if a team is willing to say with some confidence, “I think you’re not turning into a pumpkin the next four or five years”, you can get a really fantastic deal on 2-3 free agent years by buying out arbitration.
The risk that Hendricks completely falls of a cliff or injures himself such that he makes himself unworthy of this contract is pretty low, but in that extremely remote possibility that it happens, the team is much better prepared to absorb that risk than the player. I’m wondering if perhaps teams aren’t leveraging that to their advantage here, which is why some of the deals seem low.
This. Absolutely.
Negotiating as a player, there’s a maximum of one of you. (Theoretically less than one, if you’re on a prospect-laden team.) And the downside of injury, or even just losing competitiveness, is yours and yours alone. You can’t just sub in a guy from AAA..
Teams can price that risk in.
That said, I wonder if there’s an opportunity here for arbitrage via insurance on the player’s part?
Assume (it’s a sizeable assumption) that the stats are solid enough to give you, the player, a realistic floor and ceiling on your future earnings. In that case, they can be insured (Or bet upon, if you prefer.)
At which point the asymmetric part of the market goes completely away.
And this has always been the case. If you run a simulation called “Kyle Hendricks” 1,000 times, he beats this contract way more than not in free agency. But the team has the luxury of employing multiple players, while the player only gets to play one time. So the incentives are different, and there’s a possibility of win-win deals.
My marker for what is a “fair” deal was the Eugenio Suarez deal. He absolutely could have topped that had he hit the free agent market, but he only gets one career. So it made sense for them to lock him in. This, on the other hand, is a much more team friendly deal than the Suarez one. And while some of that is Hendricks-specific I think that the price for buying out one arbitration year has changed a lot, and in a way that favors teams.
Hendricks is such an outlier. The game has a lot of hard throwers and batting averages against big velo are down as well. I figure it may be a matter of time before the league figures Hendricks out and I think this was a smart move by player and team.
(love Hendricks btw and absolutely want to see him continue to succeed)