BOSTON — Liam Hendriks had his pants down as he spoke. He was wearing his underpants, but his uniform was all the way down to his knees. He had just made his first bullpen appearance of the 12 months last Wednesday, a momentous step forward for any pitcher getting back from Tommy John surgery. Yet he stood within the Boston Red Sox locker room and refused to think about the occasion serious and even noteworthy.
How did his arm feel?
“Enclosed,” he said.
Was there an additional adrenaline rush when climbing a hill?
“Not really,” he replied.
What did you notice during rehab?
“How boring this is,” said Hendriks with a serious expression.
None of it got here across as dismissive. It was just laughable, a break from the monotony for Hendriks, his teammates and even the assembled reporters. He was chatting with a packed huddle of television cameras and microphones, all due to a 15-pitch bullpen three hours before game time. To Hendriks' credit, he didn't roll his eyes. He didn't travel from Australia, through years of baseball obscurity and rounds of cancer treatment, to have fun just a few pregame fastballs within the bullpen.
“I don't know if the coaches love me or want to kill me,” Hendriks said. “Every day I have to tell them to let me do more and they try to keep me at a normal level.
“That sucks.”
He longs for moments of greater significance and is confident that they will come.
Liam Hendriks has faced major physical and mental challenges over the past 20 months, but he has managed to keep up his humorousness through all of it. (Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Numbers help with any baseball story, and Hendriks' profession is told through his three All-Star appearances, two Reliever of the Year awards and 116 profession saves. His backstory is told through the 14 teams and 6 major league organizations that saw him come and go before anyone gave him credit for pitching the ninth inning. He is the one graduate of Australia's Sacred Heart College to ever play in the most important leagues, and he was drafted 4 times and traded three more times before most individuals had even heard of him. And yet here he’s, a survivor in additional ways than one.
For Hendriks, the last 20 months have revolved entirely around 4 rounds of chemotherapy, a six-game minor league rehab stint weeks later and his emotional return to the most important leagues last May. He made 4 good appearances in June before undergoing season-ending Tommy John surgery in August after which becoming a free agent.
“Theoretically, I have a new elbow,” Hendriks said within the spring. “So I still have 10 (years) ahead of me.”
Now 35, Hendriks is decided to prove himself again. He signed a two-year contract with the Red Sox because they promised him two things: They believed he could pitch this season, they usually wanted him to spend most of his rehab with the most important league team. And that's exactly what Hendriks did. On the road, at home, all through spring training. He didn't do his rehab at some fancy, far-flung facility; he threw in the sector, sat at his corner locker, and cracked jokes on the bullpen bench. Cancer treatment kept him away from other people for much too long last 12 months. But he doesn't wallow in self-pity. He doesn't ask questions.
GO DEEPER
In the Red Sox trainers' room with Lucas Giolito and Liam Hendriks
“I've never been a big 'why me' person,” Hendriks said. “I think it was inevitable that I would have something to do with my elbow. Unfortunately, I also struggled with a lot of other issues that same year, but it is what it is. There's nothing I can do to change it. All I can do is go to the park every day with a positive attitude and hopefully rub off on some of the younger guys here.”
When Hendriks arrived at Red Sox training camp, he was given a goal of 64 mph, meaning a pitcher who normally throws a 95 mph fastball must be throwing about 64 mph when he's seven months post-Tommy John surgery. In his early days of spring training, nonetheless, he was throwing — “My surgeon probably won't be happy about this,” Hendriks said — within the mid-70s.
“Not consistent!” Hendriks clarified. “Consistently low 70s. But still, the jump from my previous time was a bit too high. … A few times I was a bit too strong in the paint. But I'd rather go too far than do too little.”
That's the experience of Liam Hendriks. Numbers don't do justice to what he does on the mound and off the sector. He's a savage with bulging veins who screams obscenities and trash talks, but he's also a teddy bear who builds Lego, is caring and cracks jokes.
Given these extremes, the December 2022 cancer diagnosis got here as a shock. Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Doctors told Hendriks he could expect six rounds of chemotherapy. He's proud that he only needed 4. He can't remember the precise date his last round began, only that it was the Chicago White Sox's first home game and he was purported to be of their bullpen, not in any hospital. He had a bone marrow biopsy in late April and started rehab the primary week of May.
His elbow lasted slightly over a month afterward.
In fact, Hendriks knew his elbow was causing problems long before it cracked. He first learned of a small tear in his UCL in 2008. He had pitched for greater than a decade without tearing it, but when he got back into the swing of things following cancer treatment – after a full six months off – he realized something was improper.
“He didn't care,” said Lucas Giolito, a former White Sox teammate and current Red Sox teammate. “A lot of guys would say in the training room or something, 'Oh, that hurts.' He said, 'I'm just going to keep going until it breaks.'”
Was there ever a thought to guard it after you've been through a lot to get back on the mound and the choice to a club looms?
“No. Hell no,” said Hendriks. “I'm not treating it like a baby.”
Hendriks said he has now turn into convinced that he’s most vulnerable to injury when he holds back.
“The elbow was definitely gone,” he said. “So I'm not going to sit there and try to rehab for another six weeks and then not come back. If it's gone, it's gone. If not, it's not gone. I was pretty sure it was already over, but I was hoping that maybe it was a little bit of scar tissue and if that breaks off at the right time, I'll be OK. It wasn't.”
This offseason, the White Sox declined a $15 million club option, making Hendriks a free agent. It's not unusual for pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery to sign two-year deals so that they can really contribute within the second 12 months. When Hendriks spoke to interested teams this winter, nonetheless, he made it clear that these weren't negotiations for 2025.
“We made it very clear that we cannot approach the matter with this attitude,” said Hendriks. “Some teams got in touch and then simply disappeared.”
Hendriks expects to pitch for the Red Sox in August. He signed a two-year contract that guarantees him $10 million but in addition features a $12 million option for 2026. When he signed, Hendriks had already began playing catch along with his physical therapist. Hendriks said he was less anxious about his elbow than about throwing the ball to a non-baseball player. But Hendriks hit his partner within the chest, and the immediate feedback was that Hendriks was not “muscular,” meaning he stayed loose and didn’t tense up. The movement was as natural as ever.
When Hendriks talks about limits, he only talks about crossing them. From Australia to the All-Star Game. From being declared waivers to signing long-term contracts. From terminal cancer to a faster-than-expected recovery. From Tommy John surgery to a fastball that was too strong in spring training. Now a 15-pitch bullpen and a tongue-in-cheek mini-press conference.
Does the sunshine at the top of a Tommy John tunnel look different than the sunshine at the top of a cancer tunnel?
“Uh, in my eyes, it's the same thing,” Hendriks said in spring training. “There's still an end goal. There's still a goal that I have to come back from. It's just a little bit of a slower process.”
Hendriks shouldn’t be a man who sits back and waits, and that's exactly what he's needed to do for much of the last 12 months and a half. He's programmed to throw the ninth pitch. Talk to him again when the time finally comes.
“It's not that (rehab) takes a long time. I can handle a long time,” said Hendriks. “I can't handle slowness. And it's the slowness that really makes me angry.”
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