‘F— no, I’m not coddling it’: Red Sox’ Liam Hendriks makes slow, confident return from Tommy John

BOSTON — Liam Hendriks had his pants down when he spoke. He was wearing his underwear, but his uniform was down to his knees. He had just thrown his first bullpen of the year last Wednesday, a significant step forward for any pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery. Yet here he was, standing in the Boston Red Sox locker room, refusing to treat the occasion as serious or even noteworthy.

How did his arm feel?

“Connected,” he said.

Did you feel extra adrenaline when you were on the hill?

“Not really,” he replied.

What did you notice during the rehabilitation process?

“How boring,” Hendriks said dryly.

None of this came across as dismissive. It was played for laughs, a break from the monotony for Hendriks, his teammates, and even the assembled reporters. He was speaking to a packed scrum of TV cameras and microphones, all because of a 15-pitch bullpen three hours before the game. Give Hendriks credit for not rolling his eyes. He didn’t travel from Australia, through years of baseball obscurity and rounds of cancer treatment, to celebrate a few pregame fastballs in the bullpen.

“I don’t know if the coaches love me or want to kill me,” Hendriks said. “Every day is a battle to tell them to make me do more and they try to keep me back in a normal stratosphere.

“What a bummer.”

He longs for moments of greater meaning and has faith that they will come.

Liam Hendriks has faced tough physical and mental challenges over the past 20 months, but has still managed to keep a sense of humor about it. (Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

There are numbers to tell every baseball story, and Hendriks’ career is told through his three All-Star Games, two Reliever of the Year awards and 116 career saves. His backstory is told through the 14 teams and six major leagues that saw him come and go before anyone trusted him with the ninth inning. He’s the only graduate of Australia’s Sacred Heart College to ever play in the majors, and he was designated for assignment four times and traded three times before most people had ever heard of him. And yet here he is, a survivor in more ways than one.

Hendriks’ past 20 months have been marked by four rounds of chemotherapy, a six-game rehab stint in the minors weeks later, and his emotional return to the big leagues last May. He had four good outings in June before undergoing Tommy John surgery in August and then hitting free agency.

“Theoretically, I have a new elbow,” Hendriks said this spring. “So I have 10 (years) to go.”

Hendriks is now 35 years old and wants to prove himself again. He signed a two-year contract 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 the majority of his rehab with the big team. So that’s what Hendriks has done. On the road, at home, in spring training. He hasn’t rehabbed in a fancy, remote facility; he’s thrown on the field, sat in his locker room, and made jokes on the bullpen bench. Last year, his cancer treatment kept him away from people for far too long. But he’s not wallowing in the pit. He’s not asking questions.

GO DEEPER

In the Red Sox trainer’s 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 to deal with my elbow. Unfortunately, it was the same year that I had to deal with a lot of other things, but it is what it is. I can’t change it. All I can do is go to the park every day with a positive attitude and hopefully be a positive influence on some of the younger guys here.”

When Hendriks reported to Red Sox camp, he had been given a target of 64 mph, meaning that a pitcher who normally throws a 95 mph fastball should be throwing about 64 mph when he’s seven months removed from Tommy John surgery. In his early days of spring training, however, he was throwing — “My surgeon probably won’t be happy with this,” Hendriks said — in his mid-70s.

“Not consistently!” Hendriks clarified. “Consistently low 70s. But it’s still like that, the jump from where I was the time before was a little too high. … A few times I was a little too strong in the paint. But I’d rather go too far than too little.”

That’s the Liam Hendriks Experience. Numbers don’t do justice to what he brings on and off the hill. He’s a vein-bulging, obscenity-screaming, trash-talking wild man, but also a Lego-building, caring, joke-making teddy bear.

Within those extremes, a cancer diagnosis in December 2022 was a shock. Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Doctors told Hendriks he could expect six rounds of chemotherapy. He’s proud he only needed four. He can’t remember exactly when his last round began, only that it was a Chicago White Sox home game and that he was supposed to be in their bullpen, not a hospital. He had a bone marrow biopsy in late April and began a rehab assignment the first week of May.

His elbow remained intact for over a month afterwards.

The truth is, Hendriks knew his elbow was in trouble long before it snapped. He had first heard about a small tear in his UCL in 2008. He had pitched for more than a decade without tearing it, but when he got back into it after his cancer treatment — after a complete six-month break — he noticed it wasn’t right.

“He didn’t care,” said former White Sox teammate and current Red Sox teammate Lucas Giolito. “A lot of guys would be like, ‘Oh, this hurts,’ and in the training room or something. He’s like, ‘I’m just going to keep going until it breaks.'”

Was there ever any thought of protecting it after he went through so much to get back on the mound and a club option loomed?

“No. F— no,” Hendriks said. “I don’t pamper it.”

Hendriks says he has come to the conclusion that he is most susceptible to injury when he holds back.

“The elbow was gone anyway,” he said. “So I’m not going to sit there and rehab for another six weeks and then not come back. If it goes away, it goes away. If it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t go away. I was pretty sure it was gone, but I was hoping maybe it was just a little bit of scar tissue, and if that breaks off at the right time, it’ll be fine. 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 with the hope of making a real contribution in that second year. When Hendriks spoke to interested teams this winter, however, he made it clear that it wasn’t a 2025 negotiation.

“We made it very clear that if you come in with that attitude, it’s a no-go,” Hendriks said. “There were a few teams that reached out and then flew right back out.”

Hendriks expects to pitch for the Red Sox in August. He signed a two-year contract that guarantees him $10 million but includes a $12 million mutual option for 2026. By the time he signed, Hendriks had begun catching balls with his physical therapist, and Hendriks said he was less concerned about his elbow and more concerned about throwing to a non-baseball player. But Hendriks hit his partner in the chest, and the immediate feedback was that Hendriks was not “muscular,” meaning he stayed loose and did not tense up. The motion was as natural as ever.

When Hendriks talks about boundaries, he’s only talking about breaking them. From Australia to the All-Star Game. From waivers to signing long-term contracts. From stage 4 cancer to a faster-than-expected recovery. From Tommy John surgery to too much oomph on his fastball in spring training. Now, a 15-pitch bullpen and an ironic mini-press conference.

Does the light at the end of the Tommy John tunnel look different than the light at the end of the cancer tunnel?

“Uh, in my mind it’s the same,” 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 kind of a slow process.”

Hendriks doesn’t have a sit-back-and-wait personality, and he’s had to do that for the past year and a half. He’s hell-bent on pitching the ninth. Reach out to him when that finally happens.

“It’s not that (rehab) takes a long time. I can handle a long time,” Hendriks said. “I can’t handle slowness. And it’s the slowness that really makes me angry.”

(Top photo of Hendriks in May 2024: Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)