Halos Stay Busy, Add Kyle Hendricks

Well, the Angels aren’t waiting around, are they? In the week immediately following the World Series, the Halos have completed the only trade so far this offseason involving players going in each direction. They’ve also acquired Scott Kingery from the Phillies for cash considerations and executed a waiver claim on Oakland’s Ryan Noda, both low-risk acquisitions with the potential to fill a niche at the big league level.

The Triple-A first base depth chart for the Angels right now lists Noda alongside Niko Kavadas and Sonny DiChiara, which is a bumper crop of cube-shaped college sluggers if ever there were one. Someone find out what Tim Elko is up to and give him a call so the Angels can have the full set. But I digress.

Amidst all that other activity, Perry Minasian and Co. have made this offseason’s most notable free agent signing to date: right-handed pitcher Kyle Hendricks, late of the Chicago Cubs. Hendricks was the second major league free agent to sign so far this offseason, after Dylan Covey’s one-year deal with the Mets, and he’s a bigger name by far. A two-time Cy Young vote-getter and a cornerstone of the successful Cubs teams of the late 2010s, Hendricks joins the Angels on a one-year, $2.5 million deal.

ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, who reported the value of Hendricks’ contract on Wednesday afternoon, noted that the Angels were interested in the 34-year-old right-hander partially because he could mentor a young pitching staff. I think baseball people tend to be quick to judge personality based on stereotype. Hendricks went to Dartmouth and hasn’t broken 91 mph in a competitive game in eight years — which sounds like hyperbole but is literally true — so he must be smart. And if he’s smart, he must be a coach on the field or something like it.

If that is the motivation for signing Hendricks, it’s a pretty amusing concept, considering the Angels aren’t exactly putting out a Generation K-type hype train for their young arms. Still, the soft-tossin’-est righty starter of his generation makes for an amusing contrast with Ben Joyce. And the cupboard isn’t completely bare. Reid Detmers was horrendous last season, but his underlying numbers were merely bad and he had two good seasons before that. And I liked what I saw out of Jack Kochanowicz the couple times I saw him pitch in 2024. (Though I realize now at least one of those starts was against the White Sox, so take that for what it’s worth.)

With all that said, Hendricks does actually seem like a smart guy, and consider this: Since that last 91-mph pitch in Game 6 of the 2016 NLCS, Hendricks has thrown 1,130 major league innings with an ERA- of 96 and accumulated 16.4 WAR. So he must have some tricks up his sleeve.

And while $2.5 million might be a lot to pay for a pitching coach, it’s a pittance for a pitcher with even a remote chance of throwing 100 or more effective big league innings. For contrast, it’s less than a third of what the Angels are going to pay Evan White to enjoy the scenic beauty of Salt Lake City this summer. But hey, the Angels are a big-market team. Even in their post-Shohei Ohtani lean years, the Halos ran a $170 million payroll last season, which was 13th in the majors. This is a rounding error.

Hendricks had spent his entire 11-season major league career with the Cubs, who acquired him in a trade with the Rangers in 2012. (Ryan Dempster went the other way.) After a period of decline for both player and team, it seemed like the two were bound to part ways eventually, and it makes sense that he’d want to go to the Angels. Hendricks grew up in Orange County, and was even drafted by the Angels out of high school in 2008. He is one of four future big leaguers who were drafted in the 39th round in 2008 but did not sign that year. The others: Mikie Mahtook, Brad Miller, and Yan Gomes. If “traded for Ryan Dempster” doesn’t give you a sense of Hendricks’ age, perhaps a Mikie Mahtook reference will put you in the right frame of mind.

Now, I’ve been burying the lede a little here. Those of you who didn’t follow the Cubs last season might be curious how Hendricks got on, and are wondering why I haven’t brought up his stats from 2024 yet. Well, they’re not awesome.

This past season, 126 pitchers threw at least 100 innings in the majors. Hendricks ranked 124th in ERA, two spots behind Patrick Corbin, who’s basically a punchline at this point in his career. Now, Hendricks’ peripherals suggest he was a little hard done by, but a 5.92 ERA gives a lot of room for a pitcher to be unlucky and bad at the same time. Indeed, Hendricks was 107th in xERA (4.80) and 121st in FIP (4.98). He was second from the bottom in strikeout rate, at 15.3%, and his walk rate was merely average and not exceptional, which left him 120th in K-BB%.

Breaking it down pitch by pitch, things don’t get much rosier. Hendricks got decent results on his curveball in 2024, but that’s not his make-or-break pitch. The key for Hendricks is his changeup — it has been his entire career.

Hendricks’ repertoire has evolved since he was a rookie, which is to be expected for a pitcher who’s lasted as long as he has. But the core of it has always been the sinker and the changeup. Hendricks has always thrown an additional fastball — originally a cutter, more recently a four-seamer — and had at least the credible threat of a curveball. But in every season of Hendricks’ career, his sinker and changeup have combined to make up between 61% and 81% of his total pitches thrown.

That combo has worked very well as recently as 2023, when Hendricks allowed a 3.74 ERA in 24 starts for the Cubs. That’s not quite as good as he was in 2016, but if Hendricks had hit free agency 12 months earlier, he’d be in line to make four or five times as much as he’s making now. Possibly more.

What’s the difference between 2023 and 2024? Well, in 2023, Hendricks’ sinker was passable and his changeup was a legitimate out pitch. A year later, both of those pitches got absolutely torched:

One of two things is going to happen to Hendricks in the season to come. He could figure something out and get his 2023 form back; it’s not like he’s losing the velocity or stuff that once made him great. He tinkered with his fastball mix to lefties in 2024, throwing them more sinkers than four-seamers for the first time since he started throwing a four-seamer regularly. And what happened? Left-handed hitters hit an even .400 — again, not a joke — against his sinker. Considering the similar movement profiles of the two pitches, and the mere six mile-an-hour difference between them, that would seem to be an obvious starting point when it comes to triaging Hendricks’ problems.

But it’s also possible that Hendricks put up an ERA near 6.00 last season because he just doesn’t have it anymore. There are certainly worse places to find that out than in Southern California, 30 miles from home. And if this is the end, he’s already got irons in the fire on his next job. At least somebody thinks he’d be a good coach.

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