2017 Pod Projections: Kyle Hendricks

The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Who was the most surprising starting pitcher in fantasy baseball last year? The answer might just be Kyle Hendricks. We ranked him 54th among starters heading into the season and he ended up earning $29.10, fourth most among starters at the end of the year. Oh, and he finished third in the Cy Young award voting. He also posted a suppressed .250 BABIP, a LOB% above 80%, and outperformed his SIERA by the widest margin among all qualified starters. So obviously, the knee-jerk reaction would be to figure some severe regression this season. Right? Let’s find out.

IP: 188 (31 games started)

Nothing crazy here. I generally refuse to project a pitcher to reach the 200 innings pitched plateau if he has never done it before. Sure, it’s an arbitrary marker, but stamina is a skill and until I see proof of a pitcher’s ability to pitch deep into games all season long, I cannot forecast it will suddenly happen. Hendricks averaged nearly 6.3 innings per start last year, just 5.6 in 2015, and 6.2 in 2014. Naturally, those IP/GS figures ebb and flow with his ERA. I’m projecting a marginal decline to almost 6.1 IP/GS this season, because…spoiler alert — I kinda think his ERA is going to rise, which will knock him out of games a tad earlier.

K%: 21.8%

Surprise! Even with a fastball that averages just about 88 mph, he has actually posted slightly above average strikeout rates these past two years. He’s not your typical soft-tosser solely getting by thanks to elite defensive support. He generates a ton of called strikes and gets enough swinging strikes to remind us that it’s not all about command, but the quality of his stuff is quite respectable as well. That changeup, MAN, that changeup! A 23.5% SwStk% last season and 22.5% for his career. But, that’s literally his only whiff-inducing pitch. Because of his reliance on that one pitch and the real possibility its effectiveness drops off, I’m forecasting a small regression in strikeout rate.

BB%: 6.3%

Hendricks has been extremely consistent with his strike-throwing game, throwing them at an above average clip each year. However, while he has outperformed his xBB% for three straight seasons, his xBB% mark climbed at a faster pace than his actual walk rate did this past season. Outperformance could continue as xBB% isn’t perfect, but the gap cannot keep widening, so something’s gotta give. Starting from a low baseline, the right play here is to assume a slight uptick in walk rate.

GB%/LD%/FB%: 49% / 20.5% / 30.5%

Like many pitchers, Hendricks’ batted ball distribution has been quite stable, so this is essentially his career average. If he threw his sinker more at the expense of his changeup, his ground ball rate would likely rise, but his overall effectiveness would probably decline, perhaps dramatically. He probably has little upside in that GB%.

HR/FB%: 10.5%

Wrigley Field boosts home runs by a small degree, but that Hendricks hasn’t noticed, as he has actually posted a better HR/FB rate at home than in away parks, both of which are better than the league average. HR/FB rates are always difficult to project, as most do regress toward the league average after accounting for home park, but there are some who do seem to have an innate ability to suppress the long ball. I don’t know if Hendricks does, so I’m giving him partial credit by projecting a below league average mark, but still above his current career mark of 9.5%.

BABIP: .280

If you’ve read my stuff over the years, you should be well aware of my disdain for analysis that includes the terms “weak contact” and “hittable”. Rarely, if ever, are any of these terms actually supported with any data other than HR/FB rate and BABIP, which just describes what happened, not why, and still doesn’t tell us if those marks were the result of good/bad luck or an actual underlying skill or lack of one. And yet, here I am, nearly buying into this whole Hendricks inducing weak contact thing. The Cubs put a historically strong defense on the field behind them, which suppressed every pitcher’s BABIP, so seemingly everyone wanted to figure out how much credit we should actually give to the pitchers themselves, if any. All that research seemed to agree that Hendricks legitimately generated weakly hit balls on his own, which go for hits less frequently, and combined with a fantastic group of fielders, essentially deserved that low BABIP.

It’s still just one season, and in 2015, he posted a league average .296 mark. But he also did the low BABIP thing in 2014, when he posted a .271 mark, so this wasn’t totally out of nowhere. And in both those seasons, he was at or near the top of the Soft% leaderboard (he led in 2016 and would have ranked fourth in 2015 if he qualified). It’s still not enough to completely convince me, but I’m listening. So even with a batted ball distribution that would typically yield a slightly higher than average BABIP, I’m going with a below average mark…to .280. Which is low, for me. Especially for a non-veteran with many seasons of proving such BABIP suppression ability. Combine that with a Cubs defense that should be excellent again and he should be a lock to beat the league average. Of course, there has to be some element of regression assumed, so my .280 is above his .272 career mark.

Below is my final projected pitching line, along with the other systems for comparison:

Remember when I quickly summarized the differences between the Steamer and ZiPS pitcher projections? Steamer regresses more heavily toward the league average for the luck metrics, which is the correct move the majority of the time, but not all the time. Hendricks is a perfect example of these methodological differences between the two systems. ZiPS assumes his suppressed BABIP is a more sustainable skill and regresses up to just .286, whereas Steamer brings it all the way close to the league average at .294. A similar thing is happening with HR/9, and the gap between the two would be larger if ZiPS wasn’t projecting a lower K/9.

Obviously, the Fans are the most bullish (when aren’t they?!), but surprisingly, I’m second lowest for ERA. When I finished projecting Hendricks’ peripherals, I was shocked, and to be honest, embarrassed, that the ERA my spreadsheet spit out was 3.11. I fully expected something in the mid-to-high 3.00 range. In fact, he was even one of my “Pan” choices in this year’s Fantasy Baseball Guide preseason magazine! Oops. This is what actually running projections accomplishes. You realize you kinda like someone you never expected to.

So far in the two drafts I have participated in, Hendricks has unsurprisingly been undervalued using my dollar values. I wasn’t the one to draft him in either league though, but it just goes to show you that no one wants to be that guy rostering the pitcher everyone knows is going to regress dramatically after a career year. The thing is, even after serious regression, he’s still a darn good pitcher.