Kyle Hendricks’ Success Fueled By Improved Pitch Tunneling

Few pitchers have “tunneled” better than Kyle Hendricks, who was named the “modern Greg Maddux” by Baseball Prospectus because of tunneling like the former Chicago Cubs and Hall-of-Famer. Hendricks wasn’t syncing his sinker and changeup early in the season when he was getting hit hard, but it now appears as if his tunneling is back.

Before I get ahead of myself, I should explain to the uninitiated that “tunneling” is the ability to throw pitches consistently through the same imaginary column of space. In other words, it means replicating the same release point across different pitches so that hitters can’t distinguish pitches (e.g., changeup vs. sinker).

We can illustrate Hendricks’ improved…