The Chicago Cubs and right-handed starter Kyle Hendricks have agreed on a four-year contract extension with an option for 2024.
Including his deal for this year at $7.405 million, the 29-year-old will earn $63 million before the option, sources told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.
Hendricks is an anomaly in today’s pitching world with his fastball topping out in the low 90s. He uses control and a devastating changeup to get hitters out. That combination resulted in the lowest ERA in the league at 2.13 in 2016, the year the Cubs won the World Series. He went 16-8 that season and finished third in Cy Young voting.
Hendricks was 14-11 last season with a 3.44 ERA in a career-high 199 innings and 33 starts.
“Hopefully, watching the way I pitch and get guys out will relate to a lot of younger pitchers,” Hendricks said Tuesday. “It’s not always about velocity but about the way you go about getting guys out at the major league level.”
The Dartmouth College product was an eighth-round pick of the Texas Rangers in the 2011 draft. He came to the Cubs in the 2012 trade that sent Ryan Dempster to Texas.
“Early on it’s easy to put ceilings on guys, based mostly on velocity,” Cubs president Theo Epstein said Tuesday. “He’s far exceeded that ceiling. We love the process that he uses to get to where he is. He’s always working.”