BCB After Dark: How much time is left for Kyle Hendricks? (2024)

It’s the end of another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and drown your sorrows with us. There are still a few tables available. We’re waiving the corkage fee. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

The Cubs got smoked by the Brewers tonight, 10-6. Shōta Imanaga had his first poor start in MLB. He warned us one was coming. And while I’m trying to not make excuses, it seemed like the Cubs hit into a lot of bad luck. Or I guess you could say the Brewers had some excellent outfield defense that seemed like bad luck.

Last night I asked you if Ben Brown should have gone out for the eighth inning while he still had a no-hitter going. The comments were almost universally in favor of taking him out, but the vote was actually quite close—only 53 percent felt that the manager Craig Counsell did the right thing by taking Brown out.

Here’s the part of the show where we talk about jazz and movies. You can skip these parts if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight we have a 20 minute concert from Copenhagen in 1968 by the Elvin Jones Trio. Jones is on drums, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Joe Farrell plays saxophone. Whoever posted this video inserted Animal from The Muppets at the beginning of the video.

The year 1967 is considered the unofficial start date for the “New Hollywood” movement when the Production Code finally came down and American film began to take the medium into entire new directions. Those directions were often pretty similar to what foreign filmmakers had been doing for almost a decade, but Hollywood went that way with more money.

Bonnie and Clyde is the most famous example of this new direction in American cinema, but it wasn’t the only 1967 film making waves. Point Blank, a debut American film by British director John Boorman, also shook things up in that pivotal year.

Point Blank is a crime/revenge film starring Lee Marvin, who was just coming off his Oscar win for Cat Ballou, which was a more traditional Hollywood film, and The Dirty Dozen, a film from earlier in 1967 that also symbolized how the industry was changing. The point is here that Marvin was a big name who got what he asked for. Marvin put his total faith in Boorman, whose only previous feature film was Catch Us If You Can, a Hard Day’s Night knockoff starring the Dave Clark Five. (He had directed a lot of British television)

Point Blank has become a bit of a cult film. Like Bonnie and Clyde, it was an especially violent film by 1967 standards. Boorman also used a lot of odd and psychedelic imagery in the movie which makes the audience wonder just how much we can trust what we see on the screen.

Marvin stars as Walker (no first name given), who agrees, alongside his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker), to rob a money drop made by a crime organization at the now-abandoned Alcatraz Prison. The mastermind of this plot, Mal Reese (John Vernon), needs the money to pay back the money he owes to that the same crime organization. Otherwise, they’re going to kill him.

After the three pull off the heist, Reese realizes that he doesn’t have enough money to pay off his debts if he splits the take with Walker. So Reese shoots Walker and leaves him to die in an empty prison cell on Alcatraz. Reese also takes Lynne with him, who is in on the double-cross but not the shooting.

Walker recovers from this shooting and then engages on a quest for revenge. Or at least to get the $93 thousand that Reese owes him. He teams up with Lynne’s sister Chris (Angie Dickinson) along the way.

I’m not going to go deep into the plot of Point Blank. For one, as I said, it’s not completely clear that what is happening on the screen is actually happening. In the second place, it’s irrelevant. This film is about Lee Marvin looking cool and killing people as he takes on the entire criminal outfit. A pre-Archie Bunker Carroll O’Connor plays the head of this “organization,” as it’s called in the film.

The action sequences in Point Blank are well-done and there aren’t a lot of slow moments in the 92 minute film. Not a lot is explained here and not a lot needs to be. It’s about Walker and his quest to get the $93 thousand he feels he’s owed along with some measure of revenge. Everyone else is just along for the ride. If you think Lee Marvin acting cool in a lot of well-staged action sequences is something you’d like, then you’ll love Point Blank. I didn’t love it, but I found the cinematography by Philipp H. Lathrop interesting enough and Marvin engaging enough that I liked it. I also liked the way the film leaves open to interpretation what we see on the screen.

Watch the trailer for Point Blank. If you think this looks cool, then you should definitely watch Point Blank. Because the film is pretty much the trailer taken out to 90 minutes. OK, there’s more to it than that, but if you don’t like what you see here, then you won’t like the movie.

I’m also a fan of mid-century design, so I’ll add that I enjoyed the sets in this film as well.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.

I do not like to bring this up for discussion, but there’s no point in ignoring the elephant in the room. Kyle Hendricks is a Cubs legend who started Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. He pitched well in that game and he pitched well for the Cubs for years. At one point, Kyle Hendricks had one of the best changeups in the game, which allowed him to dominate despite a fastball velocity that has never been above 90 miles per hour. He’s just six weeks away from ten years in the majors.

But Hendricks has been bad this season. Really bad. He was poor in 2022, but he was dealing with some injuries and he bounced back and was solid last year when he was healthy. But this year, Hendricks has been so bad that it’s getting harder to justify a spot on the roster for him.

Hendricks is throwing harder this year than he has in any season since 2016, but he’s getting hit harder. Batters are making contact 84 percent of the time when they swing at his pitched (coming into tonight), which is a career-worst for Hendricks. He’s been so bad this year that he was moved to the bullpen. And tonight, when he allowed three runs in relief over 3.2 innings of relief, he actually lowered his ERA to 10.16.

Obviously, if Hendricks weren’t a team legend and a terrific teammate, the Cubs would have released him by now. But they are clearly hoping that he can straighten things out. I think they’d also like to get him to July 10, when he would complete ten years in the majors.

So tonight’s question is “How many more starts will Kyle Hendricks make as a Cub?” If you think that Hendricks will settle down and become a successful reliever, than you can vote for “zero.” If you think that they’ll designate him for assignment before he makes another start, then that’s also a “zero.”

If you think that the Cubs will give him one last start before saying goodbye for good, then you can vote “one.” If you think he’ll hang on and make a few spot starts the rest of the season (doubleheaders and the like), then vote “2 to 5.” If you think Hendricks will return to the rotation sometime this year, vote “6 to 12.” But if you think Hendricks will find his form and pitch for the Cubs beyond this season, then vote for “More than 13.”

That’s it for this week. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that next week will be a better one for the Cubs. We hope the camaraderie around here cheered you up some. Please get home safely. We want to see you back next week. Please clean up your table. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip the waitstaff. And join us next week for more BCB After Dark.