College baseball season is here! Things kick off today across the country, and although the draft implications are not the only thing – or even the most important thing, given the fandoms out there – it’s honestly what I look at most. It’ll be difficult for this year’s draft class to match last year’s loaded group, but the Cubs are picking in the same range, and if they find a way to land another Matt Shaw, that’d be quite a win.
I love baseball.
Speaking of love. Smiling Kyle Hendricks is a happy-making Kyle Hendricks:
I’m sure it’s gotta feel so good to have a normal Spring Training this year. This is a guy who was at a very real risk of having his career ended by a shoulder injury in 2022, and who no one could know for certain would return to pitching in 2023, much less pitching as well as he did (3.74 ERA over 137.0 IP, 3.81 FIP, 2.8 WAR). Of course he’s going to be happy this Spring Training, knowing he gets to do all the normal things once again, and can head into this season healthy, revamped, and ready to stabilize the back of the rotation. That, in turn, makes me happy. Very easy guy to root for and to enjoy watching pitch.
It might be asking too much to expect another performance like last year (15% better than league average), but even if he’s merely an average starter overall, that has a lot of value, and you know he’s also providing leadership and stewardship for that pitching staff. Heck, Tommy Hottovy said it was like having another pitching coach available.
The big thing to watch on Hendricks will be the groundball rate. Yes, getting whiffs on the changeup is of course also key, but he was a near-50% groundball guy at his best, and when he started to fall off, that number plummeted. We know he cannot live in the air. The contact will simply do too much damage. So it’s not a coincidence that his results rebounded in 2023 in tandem with the groundball rate jumping to its highest level in a full season since 2018.
Speaking of Hendricks, here’s a wild update that I missed last month:
Cubs fans have known for years that Hendricks was not getting enough credit for his “stuff” because he didn’t have huge velocity or a nasty breaking pitch. But the sinker is outstanding when he locates it, and the changeup is one of the best starter changeups out there (AND he can throw two variations of it to change the horizontal movement depending on the batter!). So a slightl-above-average Stuff+ score? Sounds good to me.
Sticking with Hendricks, here’s a point he made about the Cubs hiring Craig Counsell, specifically, to be their new manager: “I want to pick his brain about how (the Brewers) were attacking me. “That’s another really small point that could end up paying huge dividends. What did they game-plan? What little things did they see that maybe we weren’t picking up on? That can only make us better.” Think about the potential extra bonus there of adding a manager who has managed against your team in your same division for years and years. He would have a specific perspective on the weaknesses of specific players that he would guard extremely carefully (both Cubs and Brewers). Now you have access to all that information, which any other manager – coming over from the American League, or with a very brief tenure, or getting promoted internally, etc. – wouldn’t necessarily have.
In other words, even setting entirely aside Counsell’s value as a really good manager (which we hope is significant), there is theoretical instant value that he and he alone could bring because of his unique situation in relation to the Cubs over the last decade.
In addition to having trade talks with the Red Sox about outfielder Jarren Duran, the Padres have reportedly talked to the Brewers about Sal Frelick. It’s clear that the Padres are looking for a cost-controlled outfielder (probably center field, ideally) for obvious reasons. I really hope they don’t send the Brewers a ton for Frelick, whose big league future I have some real skepticism about, and who is arguably superfluous to the Brewers (who may want their three outfield starters to be Christian Yelich, Jackson Chourio, and Garrett Mitchell for the long-term).
I don’t know that the Cubs would be in a spot to trade an outfielder until and unless they sign Cody Bellinger, but if that happened soon, you do wonder if they would talk to the Padres about Mike Tauchman or Alexander Canario.
More damage control on the controversial new uniforms, via Rob Manfred:
They really did nail the spring hats this year, though (the Cubs one, at least):
She’s really quite awesome:
Some sad and bad news for listeners of the ‘Onto Waveland’ podcast:
Basically, The Athletic decided to get mostly out of the regional sport podcasting business, and we were one of the cuts. That’s just kind where things are in the sports media landscape right now – and the podcasting industry more generally – so I can’t say I was totally caught off guard or shocked by the cancellation. But it still stings.
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