Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 72)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	84	Brian Moehler	2006	7.08
2	84	Tomo Ohka	2010	0.00	DNP
3	82	Todd Ritchie	2006	0.00	DNP
4	81	Tim Redding	2012	0.00	DNP
5	79	Eric Stults	2014	4.70
6	79	Josh Fogg	2011	0.00	DNP
7	79	Chris Narveson	2016	8.64
8	79	Brian Lawrence	2010	0.00	DNP
9	79	Rodrigo Lopez	2010	5.67
10	77	Dave Bush	2014	0.00	DNP
11	76	Josh Towers	2011	0.00	DNP
12	76	Claudio Vargas	2012	0.00	DNP
13	76	Eric Milton	2010	0.00	DNP
14	76	Travis Smith	2007	0.00	DNP
15	76	Ray Herbert	1964	4.03
16	75	Jose Lima	2007	0.00	DNP
17	75	Scott Baker	2016	0.00	DNP
18	75	Jeff Weaver	2011	0.00	DNP
19	75	Brett Tomko	2007	6.10
20	75	Travis Driskill	2006	0.00	DNP
21	74	Livan Hernandez	2009	5.49
22	74	Paul Wilson	2007	0.00	DNP
23	74	Matt Morris	2009	0.00	DNP
24	73	R.A. Dickey	2009	4.76
25	73	Edwin Jackson	2018	3.62
26	73	Brandon Duckworth	2010	0.00	DNP
27	73	Brad Penny	2012	7.07
28	72	Chris Jakubauskas	2013	0.00	DNP
29	72	Freddy Garcia	2011	3.87
30	72	Bruce Chen	2011	4.12
31	72	Tsuyoshi Wada	2015	3.90
32	72	Ramon Ortiz	2007	5.63
33	72	Walter Silva	2011	0.00	DNP
34	72	Jon Garland	2014	0.00	DNP
35	72	Jerome Williams	2016	8.31
36	72	Elmer Dessens	2005	4.11
37	72	Larry Benton	1932	5.00
38	72	Scott Richmond	2014	0.00	DNP
39	71	Doyle Alexander	1985	3.63
40	71	Brian Anderson	2006	0.00	DNP
41	71	Mark Redman	2008	7.94
42	71	Chien-Ming Wang	2014	0.00	DNP
43	71	Ross Ohlendorf	2017	0.00	DNP
44	71	Chris Sampson	2012	0.00	DNP
45	71	Rick Rhoden	1987	4.16
46	71	Kris Benson	2009	9.27
47	71	Chan Ho Park	2007	15.75
48	70	Glendon Rusch	2009	7.23
49	70	Jesse Petty	1929	4.75
50	70	Red Lucas	1936	3.41
51	70	Aaron Small	2006	9.43
52	70	Chris Young	2013	0.00	DNP
53	70	Shaun Marcum	2016	0.00	DNP
54	70	John Burkett	1999	5.80
55	70	Jarrod Washburn	2009	3.94
56	70	Joel Pineiro	2013	0.00	DNP
57	70	Roberto Hernandez	2015	5.10
58	70	Joe Horlen	1972	3.64
59	70	Paul Byrd	2005	4.18
60	70	Bob Ojeda	1992	4.33
61	70	Johnny Sain	1952	4.26
62	70	Jared Fernandez	2006	11.37
63	70	Jim Clancy	1990	6.87
64	69	Jim Kaat	1973	4.93
65	69	Randy Wolf	2011	4.03
66	69	John Lackey	2013	3.76
67	69	Jim Wilson	1956	4.72
68	69	Bill Sherdel	1931	4.49
69	69	Vern Law	1964	3.94
70	69	Geoff Zahn	1980	5.34
71	69	Dolly Gray	1932	5.82
72	69	Darryl Kile	2003	0.00	DNP
73	69	Kevin Correia	2015	8.87
74	69	Marty Pattin	1977	3.93
75	69	Ben Sheets	2013	0.00	DNP
76	69	Ryan Franklin	2007	3.15
77	69	Alfredo Simon	2015	5.40
78	69	Jesse Flores	1949	0.00	DNP
79	68	Milt Pappas	1973	4.56
80	68	Clayton Richard	2018	5.56
81	68	Brian Burres	2015	0.00	DNP
82	68	Rick Wise	1980	4.02
83	68	John Wasdin	2007	5.95
84	68	Danny Darwin	1990	2.32
85	68	Rick Sutcliffe	1990	5.91
86	68	Dave Goltz	1983	6.79
87	68	Jered Weaver	2017	8.72
88	68	Joe Roa	2006	0.00	DNP
89	68	Jim Lonborg	1976	3.45
90	68	Bob Muncrief	1950	0.00	DNP
91	68	Tot Pressnell	1941	3.49
92	68	Frank Lary	1964	5.65
93	68	Terry Mulholland	1997	4.77
94	68	Randy Gumpert	1952	4.78
95	68	Bronson Arroyo	2011	5.38
96	68	Steve Gromek	1954	3.03
97	68	Max Butcher	1945	4.58
98	68	Shawn Estes	2007	0.00	DNP
99	68	Jeff Harris	2009	0.00	DNP
100	68	Ed Wells	1934	5.17

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2018		How do you think Kyle Kendrick fared for his two starts in the AL East? Don’t look at the stats, just go with your gut on this one. Yep. Yep, you’re right.
2017		After Kendrick gave up a league-leading 33 homers for the Rockies in 2015, he tried and failed to make the Braves coming out of spring training. That’s the 93-loss Braves. This is not a good two seasons. It didn’t get better. He signed with the Angels in April, was sent to Triple-A and missed much of the season with a shoulder impingement. Well, they said it was a shoulder impingement. It could easy have been whiplash. Either way Kendrick brings his lack of stuff and recent injury history into 2017, when he might hold down a minor-league rotation spot in a sea-level park.
2016		Good heavens, what a signing. Colorado's been trying to isolate the attributes of a successful Coors Field pitcher for going on 20 years now, and it got them to Kyle Kendrick? A contact-oriented pitcher who can't even boast a good walk or groundball rate? Perhaps the Rockies liked that he got by without the heavy use of a curveball, a pitch Baseball Prospectus author Dan Rozenson found suffers disproportionately negative effects at their home park. No matter the reason for the experiment, it failed miserably—unless you were part of BP's Hacking Mass fantasy game, where sucking is the key and where Kendrick was the preseason's most popular pick. (Good move; he was the format's MVP.) He lost a tick off his fastball and his splitter didn't have its same bottoming-out action in Denver's thin air, leading to a career-low groundball rate and the most contact yielded since 2011. What followed were two home runs allowed every nine innings (bad, but not park-adjusted) and one of the 10 highest DRAs among starting pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched (bad and park-adjusted). Luckily for the Rockies, they only signed up for a one-year pact, meaning daily fantasy players will have to find a new pitcher to stack their lineups against.
2015		Like many a fifth starter, Kendrick's ERA swings from league average on the high end to much worse on the low end, without ever really seeing his FIP budge. His latest attempt at missing the occasional bat is a curveball that he threw about once in 10 pitches; it had one of the league's worst whiff rates, and batters slugged .450 against it. He's not getting better but he is getting more work, having set career highs in innings in each of the past two seasons, and like many a fifth starter that's about 90 percent of his value. Unlike many a fifth starter, he has earned $20 million.
2014		At the advice of both his father and former pitching coach Rich Dubee, Kendrick downgraded his cutter and polished up his changeup, and something seemed to click. He ended the 2012 season on a nearly elite run, then carried a 3.56 ERA through June 2013. Cue dark, discordant music. From the start of July on, he posted a 6.49 ERA. Blood, guts, gore, sobbing, pleading, slashing, screaming. After his final start, in mid-September, he went on the DL with shoulder inflammation. Turns out we were watching that kind of movie all along.
2013		It was bleak for Kendrick back in 2008, when he posted horrible baseline skills and even worse results. But the 23-year-old was resilient and now he’s a 28-year old veteran on the heels of two strong seasons rounding out the Phillies starting rotation. Low on pure stuff, Kendrick has survived on a control-first approach paired with a strikeout rate that skyrocketed nicely from 12 to 17 percent last year. His primary flaw is the home-run bug. Despite a rate of better than one per game, he has survived with sub-4.00 ERAs each of the past two seasons, but pulling the trifecta with the same skill set would be a real magic trick. Even if he does fall in line closer to where you would expect someone with his skills to be, as a fifth starter the bar is low: He has margin for error between where he's been and what’s acceptable.
2012		The last of the traditionalist holdouts for ERA might want to take notice of Kendrick’s 2011 season. It was almost identical to his horrendous 2010 season. He struck out a batter on average once every two innings and gave up plenty of hits. The difference in his seasons is attributable to two stats. First, he had a friendly BABIP of .261, 25 points better than his career average. Second, nine of the runs he allowed (18 percent of the total) were counted as unearned, a benefit he “earns” because he’s a groundball-type (if not groundball-effect) pitcher. He made $2.45 million in his first year of arbitration eligibility. We’ll see what the Phillies do given the possibility that an arbitrator might very well look at Kendrick’s ERA and conclude he’s much more valuable than he is. He wasn’t non-tendered this year, but he’s a good bet to be a free agent after this season.
2011		It wasn’t the plan for Kendrick to get this many innings, but it takes quite a mental gymnastics routine to believe that nobody foresaw Jamie Moyer succumbing to injury. He struck out fewer batters than any other title qualifier, his slider is still a cookie, and he no longer generates a significant number of ground balls. He turned in nine Disaster Starts (more runs than innings pitched) out of 31 in 2010, and did it all while looking like the same pitcher he’s always been. He’s worth a roster spot only at the league minimum, which gives him one more year to find a way to strike hitters out.
2010		Kendrick will be competing for the fifth spot in the rotation in spring training, but Jamie Moyer's probably got dibs until he shows 2009 was the beginning of the end. He spent much of last year trying to find another pitch to add to his predictable sinker/sinker mix, but lefties continued to belt him around a bit. Teams do not exactly line up to develop or acquire ROOGYs, but it's a role Kendrick will likely need to be fall back into if he ever wants to experience major-league success again.
2009		His heroics in '07 were nice, but while he got to hold onto his rotation slot while Eaton lost his after the Blanton deal, the Phillies eventually pulled Kendrick from the rotation with the pressure on in September, slotting in Happ against the Braves for his next two turns (and winning both). In the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture to help sort out what can be done with Kendrick, it isn't the park that's killing him; more fundamentally, no matter where he calls home, he's not hard-wired with anything that works against lefties, who have slugged .544 against him in his brief career. That's all left-handers, so not just the ones who can hit. Boxed out of the rotation by Happ and the addition of Chan Ho Park, Kendrick's in danger of becoming a situational righty or extra arm.
2008		Kendrick saved the Phillies last year. With Freddy Garcia checking out of the rotation in early June, and Jon Lieber about to do likewise, Kendrick checked in and gave the team 13 quality starts in 20 tries. He should get his medal now, because as long as his strikeout rate stays as low as it is, there won't be too many more reasons to honor him. Another thing that won't happen again: a slightly above-average rate of line drives allowed (21 percent) yielding a below-average batting average on balls in play (.285).
2007		A former high school quarterback, Kyle Kendrick made improvements in his off-speed stuff to complement a good moving fastball.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Kyle Kendrick threw 19,120 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2017, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2017, he relied primarily on his Sinker (92mph) and Cutter (88mph), also mixing in a Splitter (83mph), Fourseam Fastball (91mph) and Slider (84mph).