The Cubs dropped their series with the Padres this week, and among the concerning things that transpired in San Diego was Kyle Hendricks getting smacked around again.

What’s wrong with Kyle Hendricks?

The Padres slapped around Kyle Hendricks on Wednesday at Petco Park, and overall, his April has been challenging. After surrendering seven runs on nine hits in five innings, Hendricks owns a 12.08 ERA in three starts this season.

Hendricks said after Wednesday’s contest that he’s not usually who he is to start the season but admitted that he doesn’t know where to begin evaluating what he’s doing this season.

“Not exactly, no. I can't lie about that. I would have been doing it now,” Hendricks said. “So, a little bit of a search process, for sure. I know who I am, though. At the end of the day, I know what my strengths are. I just have to hone in on those, lock in on that, start with that.”

I spent the morning on Hendricks’ Fangraphs page to see if I could put my finger on his early season issues, and I’m also at a loss.

His velocity hasn’t been an issue, and the variance between his fastball and changeup is within the normal range, which makes me scratch my head when he says that he’s not who he usually is right now.

Entering Wednesday, Hendricks owned a 5.17 ERA in 35 career regular season starts in March and April. Even when he was at his best in 2016, when he finished the season with a league-best 2.13 mark, he opened the season with a 3.91 ERA in April.

The veteran right-hander is traditionally a slow starter, so perhaps there’s nothing to worry about here, especially considering there are no significant red flags in the velocity department.

Maybe Hendricks is being who he typically is, and we’re extra alarmed because of his age and the injury issues that the Cubs rotation is facing right now. A healthy Justin Steele and Jameson Taillon would probably make Hendricks’ rocky start less of a concern.

Hendricks usually builds momentum as the season progresses. He owns a lifetime ERA of 2.96 in May and has no ERA north of four in any month outside of March or April. Let’s take a step back and give Hendricks the benefit of the doubt.

Christopher Morel continues to mash the baseball.

Christopher Morel picked up three more hits in San Diego this week, including his first career grand slam on Tuesday.

Morel has three dingers and a .890 OPS through his first 50 plate appearances this season. He owns a 142 wRC+ and has already amassed 0.3 fWAR in only 12 games this season.

Craig Counsell’s decision to play Morel at third base—even through some early-season hiccups with the glove—looks pretty darn good.

Michael wrote a great story on Morel’s continued evolution as a hitter on Thursday at BN. In that story, Michael points out that Morel’s plate discipline is taking the next step this year, and that’s an unexpected but welcomed addition to the toolbox for Morel.

“This season, Morel is swinging at 73.8% of pitches in the strike zone, which ranks among the top-25 in MLB (and is once again far better than the league average (65%) or his career mark (69.6%)). And although it sometimes still feels like he whiffs a lot, I think that’s mostly just a byproduct of (1) his place in the lineup coming up in big spots and (2) his big swing leaving an impact on your mind. Because the truth is that Morel’s 88.6% zone-contact rate is also above average, and his overall whiff rate is better than ever.”

Whiff Rate:

Morel Career Avg.: 17.2%

2024 MLB Avg.: 10.9%

2024 Morel: 9.0%

Not too shabby.

The Cubs bullpen has been less than stellar, and that’s putting it nicely.

Javier Assad threw a solid game on Monday in San Diego, but the Cubs bullpen blew it behind him in historic fashion. Monday wasn’t an isolated incident. The Cubs bullpen has been rough on multiple occasions this season, and it’s cause for a tempered early-season concern.

Adbert Alzolay has an ERA of 3.18 in five and two-thirds innings and an FIP of 6.21. Yes, it’s early, possibly too early, to be citing ERA and FIP numbers for relievers, but the more stable metrics don’t paint a better picture. Alzolay has a 40 percent home run to fly ball ratio right now. Nearly half of your fly balls leaving the park isn’t ideal.

When Alzolay is right, that’s below 10 percent.

Héctor Neris has an ERA north of seven in his first four games in a Cubs uniform. Yency Almonte (7.20 ERA) and Jose Cuas (9.00 ERA) were disasters at the start of the season.

Again, I’m not convinced that this is a long-term problem right now, but it’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t been an excellent start for most of the Cubs bullpen this season.

Hopefully, when Steele and Taillon get back, the Cubs can shift Javier Assad and Ben Brown into the bullpen to give them some more reliable arms in the swing starter and middle-inning-relief role, taking some pressure off of the back end of the bullpen, which is being overused early due to the lack of depth in the rotation.

More Chicago Cubs from Bleacher Nation

• Michael has more on Christopher Morel’s transformation at the dish in the early stages of the season.

• Per multiple reports, federal authorities today announced that Ippei Mizuhara, formerly the translator for Shohei Ohtani, is facing formal charges related to the scandal that rocked baseball’s opening week.

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