Cubs' Hendricks: ‘I need to perform' to earn 2nd extension

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Sometime in the next two months, Kyle Hendricks is expected to be the last man standing from the Cubs’ 2016 championship roster.

How long he might remain standing probably comes down to what suddenly looks like one of the biggest seasons of his career in 2023 after acknowledging Monday that a small capsular tear in his shoulder has officially ended his season and refocused him on the final year of his four-year, $55.5 million deal.

A huge year on multiple levels for the Cubs’ three-time Opening Day starter.

“Those are the conversations we had from the top down,” Hendricks said. “No matter where this team goes, my value needs to be at its highest next year for any direction we’re going to take.”

RELATED: Kyle Hendricks has shoulder tear, 2022 season over

Hendricks was the only core player from the 2016 World Series roster to agree to a multiyear extension since that drought-ending title, one of the few reasons he remains one of the final three players left from that team.

Jason Heyward already has been told the Cubs plan to release him after the season with a year left on his contract, and Willson Contreras is expected to get a qualifying offer on his way to free agency.

Hendricks, meanwhile, has a $14 million guaranteed year left on his deal, with a $16 million club option for 2024.

And by next spring, he expects to be at 100 percent health and strength, and focused on what he thinks will be a turnaround season for the team in its latest rebuild — and on proving he deserves at least a conversation with Jed Hoyer’s front office on the subject of another contract extension.

“I would absolutely love that,” said Hendricks, a former ERA champion who turns 33 in December. “I need to pitch at that level again. I need to produce and perform to be a part of this winning culture and this winning that’s coming.

“I want to be a part of that. So I’m focusing on myself to do as much as I can to put myself in that position. From there, that’s the business side of it.”

Hendricks has no immediate plans of contemplating the finish line of his career. “I want to pitch as long as I can,” he said.

And between this year’s injury and the two years of control left on his deal, the club hasn’t explored even concepts for another extension with him yet.

In fact, if Hendricks returns to productive form next year, and the team struggles, he could join many of his championship brethren on the trade market next summer — his name already having briefly been floated this year before he went on the injured list.

That’s just another part of the business side of the game, especially with the recent roster teardown, said Hendricks, shrugging off those rumors and that possibility.

“I would love to be here. It’s heaven really. Heaven on Earth,” he said. “I wouldn’t change anything [about his Cubs career]. But it’s a business. Things happen. And I’m OK with that. If you end up being somewhere else, you just make the most of it.”

On the other hand, what if Justin Steele is anything close next year to what he has looked like the the last month or two in particular?

And what if the Cubs add another free agent signing this winter to last winter’s Marcus Stroman signing?

And what if that makes a healthy, veteran Hendricks start looking like especially valuable rotation depth for a competitive team?

A guy with Game 7 mettle. A clubhouse presence who remembers 2016 from the middle of the October heat — the last one standing, even.

That vision of a future for Hendricks continuing into the next competitive wave for the Cubs starts with the rehab program he’ll soon kick into gear in Arizona, and a 2023 crossroads season for his career.

“I’ve loved my time here so much,” he said. “I’ve built so many good relationships with everybody from the top down that when that time comes, we’ll have those discussions.

“But No. 1 is I need to perform. I need to set myself up to even have those possibilities and those options to stay here.”

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