Cubs: It’s OK, everyone – Kyle Hendricks will be fine… right?

Kyle Hendricks will be forgiven if he just ignores Mother’s Day next year. The holiday was not kind to him Sunday as he suffered an embarrassing loss to the cellar-dwelling Pirates.

Hendricks went out to the mound in the first inning and did just what he wanted to. Surprisingly, that was the problem. His usual recipe for success completely backfired. He left sometime later down by four and wondering what just happened.

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Never a strikeout pitcher, the right-hander lives by inducing weak contact. He relies upon the hitter to get himself out. On Sunday, he got five of the first six Pirates to hit off the handle or on the tip of their bats to the tune of weak grounders and dying ducks with exit velocities in the low seventies. Perfect, right? Not so fast.

Somehow, those dribblers and puny line-drives found grass at an alarming rate and suddenly the Pirates were ‘hitting them where they ain’t!’

The crowning touch to Hendricks’ miserable first inning came when Wilmer Difo looped a ball to center field and Jake Marisnick collapsed before he could catch it for the third out. By the time Bryant got to the ball and threw it in, two runs scored to make it 3-0. A subsequent throwing error let the fourth run of the inning cross the plate.

After striking out the opposing pitcher for the third out, Hendricks walked to the dugout probably wondering what he had done wrong. He’d executed his game plan perfectly and he was losing by four before his guys even got a crack with the bats.

The good news is, he wasn’t getting knocked around and seeing his pitches squared up as he had a few games back. Hendricks will probably be able to recover as long as he keeps getting batters to do his bidding, but don’t be surprised if he avoids anything colored pink for a while.

After the game, he might have been thinking of the quote from Bert Gummer in the movie “Tremors 3”: “What kind of supreme deity would condone such irony?” One thing is for sure: It was a Mother’s Day Kyle would like to forget.