(670 The Score) Cubs right-hander Kyle Hendricks is scheduled to take the hill against the White Sox on Wednesday evening at Wrigley Field.
When he does, he’ll be coming off an ugly outing in what’s been a rocky start to his season. After giving up six runs in 4 1/3 innings in a loss to the Brewers last Friday, Hendricks has a 5.47 ERA and 1.50 WHIP in five starts.
So what’s going on with him? Hendricks is struggling to get the downward bite on his pitches early on, manager David Ross explained on the Laurence Holmes Show on Tuesday afternoon.
“The thing he talks about the most and that we see from the side is the ball just gets a little bit flat,” Ross said. “When he’s got angle and the sinker is sinking down underneath rather than running across the zone, you just got more room for error and you don’t have to be so fine. And then a couple of the balls, when they do get up, guys put better swings on them and maybe the ball gets in the air. He’s a groundball pitcher. In his last start, he didn’t get a lot of balls on the ground. When he’s right, he’s getting balls on the ground and getting guys to chase underneath. That’s his strength. So just a couple of those things.”
Hendricks induced just three groundballs and 14 flyballs in his loss against the Brewers last Friday. That came after his best outing of the season, when he threw seven scoreless innings in a win against the Pirates on April 23.
“He’s had some really good starts,” Ross said. “I think there’s probably more positives than negatives, but we want to make sure when we do have one of those days where he doesn’t feel quite as good and the ball is flattening out, we need to adjust off that a lot sooner than we’ve done so far.”