MLB Pitchers: Slow and Steady Wins the Game for These Arms
By Bill Felber
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Kyle Hendricks
Kyle Hendricks struggled through April, but he has dominated all three of his May starts and he’s now pitching in a way that hitters find baffling. In those three May starts, he has pitched 25 innings, allowed just one run, 12 hits and one walk. Perhaps more remarkable, he’s needed just an average of 91 pitches per game to do all that.
His nickname among the Cubs is “The Professor,” but on the mound he’s more “The Efficiency Expert.”
Velocity? Hendricks has none. His 4-seam fastball averages 86.7 mph, which puts him at the absolute bottom of big league arms from a strict power standpoint.
But he makes up for that with stunning command. Only seven percent of Hendricks pitches find a batter’s ideal hitting zone. Yet batters convert Hendricks pitches into only an 86.6 mph exit velocity, putting him in the upper quarter of pitchers in that regard. Only 6.5 percent of batters square up a Hendricks pitch.
Despite Hendricks’ lack of velocity, only 35 percent of opponents hit his pitches to the pull field, more evidence that he is a weak-contact specialist. The reason has to do with Hendricks ability to work the corners. His “edge” rate – the percentage of Hendricks pitches that catch a corner of the strike zone – is 48.6 percent, nearly half.