beckdawg
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Look Arrieta is great but I don't think many are undervaluing him anymore. What spurred this thread was something fan graphs posted here http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-cubs-have-a-3-starter/
Now I've always been a big Hendricks guy prior to him even being in the majors largely because I read something that suggested pitchers with sub 2 walk rates are often very under valued if they don't have dominating stuff. What I found particularly interesting about the above article was this comparision. Sonny Gray is obviously really good and as the article suggest he's still probably a better pitcher. But the fact that Hendricks numerically is even in the same area combined with how most typically view him is a rather big difference. Overall, Hendricks' ERA is probably the reason but he's been a bit unlucky with HRs this year. He's basically given up double the number per 9 innings you'd expect and if you look at his xFIP which normalizes that to 10.5% league average his ERA would be 3.33. That 10.5% HR rate would be higher than he's been throughout his career in the minors as well.
In terms of fWAR, Hendricks has been the #29 best pitcher this year. For what it's worth, at 3.1 fWAR he's only 0.6 fWAR behind Sonny Gray who's had 3.7. That puts him ahead of more name recognizable pitchers such as Jordan Zimmermann and Felix Hernandez and in a similar area as guys like Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez, Gio Gonzalez, Collin McHugh and aforementioned Gray. Not bad for a guy that most view as a #5 starter.
Hendricks is not Maddux and those comparisons were always dumb. However, if you take his 254ish innings pitched thus far as a decent sample of what he is/can be, here's a list of pitchers since 1950 with a k/9 > 7, a bb/9 < 2.25 and a ground ball rate over 45%. Of particular interest to me are Oswalt and Wainwright. Both numerically speaking have been in similar range to what Hendricks has done in terms of k/9 bb/9 and ground ball rates. Wainwright's pitch f/x numbers show his pitchers are a bit more valuable than Hendricks so maybe he's not an amazing comp. As for Oswalt, pitch f/x only goes back to 2007 so it misses a couple of his best seasons but with that being said, his stuff didn't have that much difference value wise with Hendricks best stuff. I've also mentioned in the past that Mussina had similar numbers to Hendricks though he didn't fall on this list.
Either way, most of the players on that list were at least half way decent pitchers. And if we suggest that Hendricks is some where between Medlen/Ryu and Oswalt/Wainwright you're probably talking about him being more valuable than a #4 pitcher as the original article suggests. Speaking of said article, if their talk of him ditching the cutter holds true, his other pitches were Sinker(0.4 pVAL/C), Change(1.3 pVAL/C), Curve(1.0 pVAL/C), fastball(-4.9 pVAL/C). For what it's worth the cutter he ditched is -1.2 pVAL/C. For those unfamiliar, pVAL/C basically just measures the value of a pitch against the league where 0 is average. Looking at the rankings, his curve was the 18th best, his change was 19th best just to give those numbers some context. To add a little more context, he's thrown his sinker 60.5% of the time(1639 pitches), his change up 20%(544 pitches) his cutter 8.3%(225 pitches), his curve 7.4%(201 pitches) and his fastball 3.6%(100 pitches).
So, all the talk about Hendricks having underwhelming stuff is to some degree overstated. His 3 best pitches he's throwing about 88% of the time and all three of those pitches were above league average. Additionally, Hendricks seems to me to be the type of guy who realizes his limitations is going to work to find another offering he can throw with positive results. Just looking at other good sinkerball pitchers, it looks like sinker/slider combos often work well together. Perhaps Hendricks would be better served with the downward action of the slider as opposed to the cutter though they are pretty similar pitches.
Now I've always been a big Hendricks guy prior to him even being in the majors largely because I read something that suggested pitchers with sub 2 walk rates are often very under valued if they don't have dominating stuff. What I found particularly interesting about the above article was this comparision. Sonny Gray is obviously really good and as the article suggest he's still probably a better pitcher. But the fact that Hendricks numerically is even in the same area combined with how most typically view him is a rather big difference. Overall, Hendricks' ERA is probably the reason but he's been a bit unlucky with HRs this year. He's basically given up double the number per 9 innings you'd expect and if you look at his xFIP which normalizes that to 10.5% league average his ERA would be 3.33. That 10.5% HR rate would be higher than he's been throughout his career in the minors as well.
In terms of fWAR, Hendricks has been the #29 best pitcher this year. For what it's worth, at 3.1 fWAR he's only 0.6 fWAR behind Sonny Gray who's had 3.7. That puts him ahead of more name recognizable pitchers such as Jordan Zimmermann and Felix Hernandez and in a similar area as guys like Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez, Gio Gonzalez, Collin McHugh and aforementioned Gray. Not bad for a guy that most view as a #5 starter.
Hendricks is not Maddux and those comparisons were always dumb. However, if you take his 254ish innings pitched thus far as a decent sample of what he is/can be, here's a list of pitchers since 1950 with a k/9 > 7, a bb/9 < 2.25 and a ground ball rate over 45%. Of particular interest to me are Oswalt and Wainwright. Both numerically speaking have been in similar range to what Hendricks has done in terms of k/9 bb/9 and ground ball rates. Wainwright's pitch f/x numbers show his pitchers are a bit more valuable than Hendricks so maybe he's not an amazing comp. As for Oswalt, pitch f/x only goes back to 2007 so it misses a couple of his best seasons but with that being said, his stuff didn't have that much difference value wise with Hendricks best stuff. I've also mentioned in the past that Mussina had similar numbers to Hendricks though he didn't fall on this list.
Either way, most of the players on that list were at least half way decent pitchers. And if we suggest that Hendricks is some where between Medlen/Ryu and Oswalt/Wainwright you're probably talking about him being more valuable than a #4 pitcher as the original article suggests. Speaking of said article, if their talk of him ditching the cutter holds true, his other pitches were Sinker(0.4 pVAL/C), Change(1.3 pVAL/C), Curve(1.0 pVAL/C), fastball(-4.9 pVAL/C). For what it's worth the cutter he ditched is -1.2 pVAL/C. For those unfamiliar, pVAL/C basically just measures the value of a pitch against the league where 0 is average. Looking at the rankings, his curve was the 18th best, his change was 19th best just to give those numbers some context. To add a little more context, he's thrown his sinker 60.5% of the time(1639 pitches), his change up 20%(544 pitches) his cutter 8.3%(225 pitches), his curve 7.4%(201 pitches) and his fastball 3.6%(100 pitches).
So, all the talk about Hendricks having underwhelming stuff is to some degree overstated. His 3 best pitches he's throwing about 88% of the time and all three of those pitches were above league average. Additionally, Hendricks seems to me to be the type of guy who realizes his limitations is going to work to find another offering he can throw with positive results. Just looking at other good sinkerball pitchers, it looks like sinker/slider combos often work well together. Perhaps Hendricks would be better served with the downward action of the slider as opposed to the cutter though they are pretty similar pitches.
I think he has started to figure things out late this season and I believe he can be a solid starter for the Cubs at the back end of the rotation for some time.