Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic Detroit broke news on Wednesday afternoon that the Detroit Tigers have hired long-time Chicago Cubs starting pitcher, Kyle Hendricks, as a special assistant to the front office. The relationship between president of baseball operations, Scott Harris, and GM Jeff Greenberg, goes back a decade to their time working under Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer in the Cubs’ front office. Regarded as one of the smartest pitchers of his era, the soft-tossing right-hander made 301 starts
and compiled a 3.79 ERA in his 12 year major league career despite rarely topping 90 mph.
Hendricks pitched 11 of his 12 major league seasons for the Cubs, putting together a 105-91 record. He concluded his major league career with a decent season as a depth starter for the Los Angeles Angels in 2025 before hanging up his spikes. Now he’ll work for the Tigers, presumably in a pitching strategies consulting role.
The Dartmouth grad worked with a relatively simple pitch mix that included fourseam fastballs and sinkers, one of the better changeups in the game, and a curveball. He had a cutter early in his career but quickly abandoned it. On the other hand, by changing speeds and shape, varying his delivery time, and locating all four pitches extremely well, Hendricks was able to make a fairly simple, underpowered arsenal work very effectively. He understood the concept of effective velocity as well as anyone, setting hitters up with harder stuff around the edges while getting weak contact, but then dropping in well located curveballs and changeups for strikes until hitters got tentative. Hendricks was great at reading hitters, and if you started thinking soft on him, he would rush an 88-90 mph fastball up and in, often getting the kinds of defensive hacks you see against pitchers throwing 98 mph or faster.
Jim Price would no doubt have considered Hendricks a master of the art of pitching. If you enjoy the craft beyond just the power stuff featured around the game, Hendricks was your guy to watch.
It will be interesting to see what role he plays with the Tigers. Stavenhagen mentions a role in pitching development, so perhaps his focus will be on the farm system. Since former director of pitching development, Gabe Ribas, left to join the Colorado Rockies coaching staff this offseason, the Tigers have gone without one. Instead multiple coaches are working in tandem with director of player development, Shane Ferrell, and vice-president and assistant general manager in charge of player development, Ryan Garko. So there is certainly room for another voice in terms of helping the Tigers young arms learn how to develop their ability to really pitch, beyond the normal development work towards improved stuff and command.
