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Chicago Cubs: After this year, you can’t call Kyle Hendricks an ace any longer

Kyle Hendricks has started some of the biggest games in Chicago Cubs history. The pennant-clinching contest in the NLCS at Wrigley Field in 2016. Game 7 of that fateful Fall Classic. The list goes on and on.

Just because he lacks the swing-and-miss stuff and overpowering velocity of the game’s biggest names, Hendricks has managed to fly under the radar for years now. Entering the 2021 season, the right-hander had made 174 starts and worked to a 3.12 ERA – to go along with an identical 3.12 mark in the postseason, as well.

But this year, it’s all gone off the rails for Hendricks – especially of late, when he’s seen his ERA balloon to a previously unthinkable 4.