Chicago Cubs: Kyle Hendricks has broken the Cubs’ pitching philosophy

The Cubs are betting success can be found in a soft-tossing starting rotation.

Cubs ace Kyle Hendricks is unconventional in style. His fastball doesn’t touch 90 MPH, and he gets by with confusing hitters and inducing weak contact with a devastating changeup and the occasional curveball. Having a guy like this in your rotation can be a good thing because it’s a change of pace from the typical mid-90s fastball-slider combination.

However, the Cubs must seem to think this is the only way to get outs these days? Heading into 2021, they will have three soft-tossing pitchers in the rotation with Hendricks, Alec Mills and now Zach Davies, who was acquired in the trade of Yu Darvish.

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Davies’ average velocity on his fastball for his career is 89.2 MPH. Mills’ average velocity is 90.1, and Hendricks tops out at 87.3. Davies and Hendricks have both had sustained careers of success at this point, and the jury is still out on what Mills actually is. He showed a lot of good things this season but there was a whole lot of bad, as well.

With those three, you have three of the softest-tossing arms in the league in the rotation. Chicago, which has badly needed a philosophical change at the plate for years now, now seemingly need to think about an overhaul on the pitching side of things. With two spots left in the 2021 rotation, the Cubs need to think big picture when it comes to rounding it out.

A rotation full of low-velocity pitchers might be a recipe for disaster. If teams can time it up, the Cubs could be in for some trouble. It’s one thing to face one of those guys, but facing three of them consecutively is a different story.

This article is not meant as an indictment or an attack on the Cubs. It’s a plea as a fan to change the organizational philosophy as fans have been wanting it for a long time. Theo Epstein stepped away, which ushered in a new era, and with that, philosophies should change – or at the very least be reevaluated.

Hendricks, on his best day, carves up hitters with the best of them, but most soft-tossing pitchers just aren’t entertaining or aesthetically pleasing to watch, and the Cubs will now have three of them starting games. Fortunately, the bullpen for the Cubs has more velocity than the rotation, although that’s a low bar at this point.

Given he’s heading into his final year of team control, we don’t even know if Davies will make it past the trade deadline. If the team’s treading water and he’s performing well, the righty could make a perfect ‘flip’ guy. But, at least out of the gate, the Cubs are betting heavily on a group of arms that are hardly overpowering in any sense.