Red Soxâs Hendriks moves slowly but confidently back from Tommy John: âI donât baby itâ
BOSTON â Liam Hendriks had his pants down as he spoke. His undershorts were on, but his uniform was down to his knees. Heâd just thrown his first bullpen of the year last Wednesday, a momentous step forward for any pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery. Yet he stood in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse refusing to treat the occasion as serious, or even notable.
How did his arm feel?
âAttached,â he said.
Was there some added adrenaline getting on a mound?
âNot really,â he answered.
What stood out about the rehab process?
âHow boring it is,â Hendriks deadpanned.
None of this came across as dismissive. It was played for laughs, a break from the monotony for Hendriks, his teammates, and even the gathered reporters. He was speaking to a full scrum with TV cameras and microphones, all because of a 15-pitch bullpen three hours before game time. Give Hendriks credit for not rolling his eyes. He didnât travel from Australia, through years of baseball obscurity and rounds of cancer treatment to celebrate a few pregame fastballs in the bullpen.
âI donât know whether the trainers love me or want to kill me,â Hendriks said. âEvery day is a struggle telling them to let me do more and having them try to hold me back into a normal stratosphere.
âWhich sucks.â
Heâs longing for moments of greater consequence and is confident theyâre coming.
There are numbers to help tell every baseball story and Hendriksâ career is told through his three All-Star Games, two Reliever of the Year awards, and 116 career saves. His backstory is chronicled through the 14 teams and six major-league organizations that saw him come and go before anyone trusted him with the ninth inning. Heâs the one and only graduate of Australiaâs Sacred Heart College to ever play in the majors, and he was designated for assignment four times and traded three more before most people had ever heard of him. Yet, here he is, a survivor in more ways than one.
Hendriksâ past 20 months have been all about four rounds of chemotherapy, a six-game rehab assignment in the minors weeks later, and his emotional big-league return last May. He had four good outings in June before season-ending Tommy John surgery in August and then entered free agency.
âTheoretically, Iâve got a new elbow,â Hendriks said this spring. âSo, Iâve got another 10 (years) in me.â
Now 35 years old, Hendriks is hellbent on proving himself yet again. He signed a two-year deal with the Red Sox, in part, because they promised him two things: They believed he could pitch this season, and they wanted him to spend most of his rehab process with the big-league team. So, thatâs what Hendriks has been doing. On the road, at home, throughout spring training. He hasnât been rehabbing at some fancy, far-flung facility; heâs been throwing on the field, sitting at his corner locker, and making jokes on the bullpen bench. Cancer treatment kept him away from people for far too long last year. But he does not wallow. He does not question.
GO DEEPER
Inside the Red Sox trainerâs room with Lucas Giolito and Liam Hendriks
âIâve never been a big âwhy meâ person,â Hendriks said. âI think it was inevitable that I was going to have something to do with my elbow. Unfortunately, it was in the same year that I dealt with a lot of other things, but it is what it is. Thereâs nothing I can do to change it. All I can do is show up to the park every day with a positive attitude and hopefully rub off on some of the younger guys here.â
When Hendriks reported to Red Sox camp, heâd been given a target of 64 mph, as in, a pitcher who typically throws a 95-mph fastball should be throwing roughly 64 mph when heâs seven months out from Tommy John surgery. In his early days of spring training, though â âMy surgeon is probably not going to be happy about this,â Hendriks said â he was throwing in the mid-70s.
âNot consistently!â Hendriks clarified. âConsistently low 70s. But itâs still, the jump from where I was the time before that was a little too high. ⌠A couple of times I was a little too strong in the paint. But I prefer to go too far than not do enough.â
Such is the Liam Hendriks Experience. Numbers donât do justice to what he brings on the mound and off the field. He is a vein-bulging, obscenity-screaming, trash-talking wildman, but also a Lego-building, caregiving, joke-making teddy bear.
Within those extremes, a cancer diagnosis in December of 2022 was a shock. Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Doctors told Hendriks to expect six rounds of chemotherapy. Heâs proud of the fact he needed only four. He canât remember the exact date his last round started, only that it was the Chicago White Soxâs home opener, and he was supposed to be in their bullpen, not in some hospital. He had a bone marrow biopsy at the end of April and began a rehab assignment the first week of May.
His elbow lasted a little more than a month after that.
The truth is, Hendriks knew his elbow was in trouble long before it popped. Heâd first learned of a small tear in his UCL in 2008. Heâd pitched for more than a decade without snapping it, but as he ramped up in his return following cancer treatment â after a full six months off â he could tell it wasnât right.
âHe didnât care,â former White Sox teammate and current Red Sox teammate Lucas Giolito said. âA lot of guys would be like, âOh, this hurts,â and in the training room or whatever. He was like, âIâm just going to go until it breaks.ââ
Was there ever any thought of protecting it after going through so much to get back on the mound and a club option looming?
âNo. Fâ no,â Hendriks said. âI donât baby it.â
Hendriks said heâs come to believe heâs most susceptible to injury when he holds back.
âThe elbow was gone no matter what,â he said. âSo, Iâm not sitting there to try to rehab another six weeks potentially and not come back. If it goes, it goes. If it doesnât, it doesnât. I was pretty sure it was already done, but I was holding out hope that it was maybe a little (bit) of scar tissue, and if that snaps off at the right time, Iâll be fine. It wasnât that.â
This offseason, the White Sox declined a $15 million club option, making Hendriks a free agent. Itâs not unusual for pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery to sign two-year deals with an eye toward truly contributing in that second year. When Hendriks talked to interested teams this winter, though, he clarified that it wasnât a 2025 negotiation.
âWe made it very abundantly clear that if youâre coming in with that attitude, itâs a no-go,â Hendriks said. âThere were some teams that reached out and just faded away straight from there.â
Hendriks expects to be pitching for the Red Sox this August. He signed a two-year deal that guarantees him $10 million but includes a $12 million mutual option for 2026. By the time he signed, Hendriks had begun playing catch with his physical therapist, and Hendriks said he was less worried about his elbow and more worried about spiking a throw to a non-baseball player. But Hendriks hit his partner in the chest, and the instant feedback was that Hendriks wasnât âmuscly,â meaning he was staying loose and not getting tense. The motion was as natural as ever.
When Hendriks talks about limits, he talks only about breaking them. From Australia to the All-Star Game. From being on waivers to signing long-term contracts. From Stage 4 cancer to a faster-than-expected recovery. From Tommy John surgery to having too much oomph on his fastball in spring training. Now a 15-pitch bullpen and a tongue-in-cheek miniature press conference.
Does the light at the end of a Tommy John tunnel look different than the light at the end of a cancer tunnel?
âEhh, in my mind, itâs the same,â Hendriks said in spring training. âThereâs still an end goal. Thereâs still a goal that I need to get back from. Itâs just a little bit more of a slow-moving process.â
Hendriks doesnât have a sit-back-and-wait personality, and heâs had to do exactly that for much of the past year and a half. Heâs wired to pitch the ninth. Check with him again when that finally happens.
âItâs not that (rehab) is long. I can handle long,â Hendriks said. âI canât handle slow. And itâs the slowness thatâs really pissing me off.â
(Top photo of Hendriks in May 2024: Maddie Malhotra / Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
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