Kyle Hendricks near deal with Angels (report)

The Angels are close to adding a veteran arm to their rotation, nearing a one-year deal worth about $3 million with right-hander Kyle Hendricks, according to a report from MLB Network insider Jon Heyman on Wednesday morning. The club has not confirmed the news.

Hendricks took a bit of a step back in 2024, posting a career-high 5.92 ERA in 29 games (24 starts) for the Cubs. He’s never thrown hard nor missed bats at an elite level, but he struck out just 87 batters in 130 2/3 innings, a 15.3% strikeout rate that is the lowest of Hendricks’ 11-year career and was one of the lowest in the Majors in 2024.

Hendricks’ age-34 season in ‘24 came on the heels of a more successful 2023 (3.74 ERA in 24 starts), although the veteran posted a 4.77 ERA in 2021 and a 4.80 in 2022. He has spent his whole Major League career with the Cubs, and in June became one of just three Cubs players in the Modern Era (since 1900) to reach 10 years of service time with the club. An eighth-round Draft pick by the Rangers out of Dartmouth in 2011, Hendricks was shipped to the Cubs as part of the Ryan Dempster deal at the 2012 Trade Deadline.

In his first seven MLB seasons from 2014 to 2020, Hendricks was a top-of-the-rotation starter for the Cubs despite an average fastball velocity of just 87.4 mph in that span. He consistently pitched to contact effectively, posting a 3.12 ERA for Chicago across 174 starts in the regular season and owning an identical 3.12 mark in 57 2/3 career postseason innings. Although his quality-of-contact metrics have declined in recent years, there’s one thing Hendricks still does quite well: inducing soft contact. Even amid his tough 2024, he ranked in the 97th percentile in MLB in average exit velocity allowed.