Liam Hendriks is back in the bigs after 681 days: ‘It’s been a long and arduous journey’

BOSTON — It wasn’t exactly what Liam Hendriks had envisioned for his first appearance in a major-league game in 681 days. And while the results matter, the journey was the story on Sunday in Boston’s 8-4 loss to the Chicago White Sox.

The bullpen door swung open in the top of the eighth with the Red Sox trailing 5-4. As Hendriks jogged out to the mound for his first outing since June 9, 2023, the Fenway crowd cheered in recognition of the long road he’d taken to get back to the big leagues. Since the end of the 2022 season, Hendriks had pitched in just five games, first beating non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the last 22 months.

The last time he’d pitched in a big-league game, the pitch clock hadn’t been installed yet and he was playing for the White Sox, the team in the visitors’ dugout on Sunday.

Hendriks allowed a single and a two-run homer, but got a pop-up and a strikeout (a ball that Red Sox manager Alex Cora made sure to keep). Catcher Blake Sabol picked off a runner at first after Hendriks allowed a second single, ending the inning.

“It was good to get his feet wet,” Cora said. “Obviously he didn’t like the outing, but the fact that he fought and put himself in this position, you have to tip your hat to him.”

Hendriks threw 24 pitches, 15 for strikes, and averaged 95.7 mph with his fastball.

“Some good things to take from it, some not so great things to take from it,” Hendriks said. “But, now I can say I’ve gone out there. Now I can say I’ve pitched for the Boston Red Sox. Now there’s no sentimental value to anything like that. It’s go and perform.”

That’s all Hendriks has asked for: another chance to prove he can be a big-league pitcher again.

“It’s been a long and arduous journey to get here, but now I’m here,” he said. “Now I can actually perform and go out there and do what these guys are paying me to do.”

---

White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz remembers the phone call he got from Hendriks in January 2022 when Hendriks told Katz that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

It was an unthinkable diagnosis for a pitcher with a larger-than-life personality like Hendriks.

“It was shocking,” Katz said on Sunday afternoon. “He called me at my house, really close to spring training. I figured he was calling me to update me on how things were going that offseason, and then he told me what was ahead. He said it was a very positive outlook. For me, if anybody could handle it, it’d be him. But it was when I got off the phone, it was a little bit of a surreal moment, like, ‘Oh my God, this is bigger than baseball. This is somebody’s life we’re talking about.’”

Hendriks first felt a lump on the back of his head along his hairline in the spring of 2022. Soon after, he found two more along his neck. Blood tests came back negative and with no other symptoms, he initially thought it was stress-related or perhaps a viral infection. But by the offseason, when the lumps weren’t going away, a doctor suggested a needle biopsy to rule anything out. The results came back abnormal.

Hendriks still hoped he’d be able to pitch that spring, but just before Christmas a full biopsy confirmed that he had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Doctors gave him no choice but to undergo a dual immunotherapy and chemotherapy treatment.

In January 2023, Hendriks started treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where he lived at that time. Every 28 days, he’d have two consecutive days of immunotherapy and chemo. But he never strayed far from the field.

Other players who’d gone through cancer treatments became invaluable resources for Hendriks, including Jameson Taillon, who beat testicular cancer in 2017.

“After my first round (of treatment) I’d gone to the field a couple times and played catch, I was just sticking to 90 feet to make sure I didn’t lose everything,” Hendriks recalled. “I got a text from (Taillon) and it said, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you what you can and cannot do.’”

The text motivated Hendriks, who threw a bullpen a few days after his second round of treatment and kept throwing throughout at the White Sox spring training facilities.

In late April 2023, after his fourth round of treatment, a bone marrow biopsy showed the treatments were working and he was soon declared cancer-free. He threw a live batting practice session two days later and remarkably returned to the White Sox by the end of May.

But that was half of his story.

Even before Hendriks returned to the mound after beating cancer, he knew his arm was in trouble. He’d dealt with elbow pain on and off since the early part of his professional career when he’d been diagnosed with a tear on the outside of his elbow. Cortisone shots helped him stay on the field, but after ramping up his throwing during cancer treatments, he felt a different kind of pain. Despite the discomfort, he was determined to return after beating cancer. He tried to convince himself that the pain would eventually dissipate.

“If I keep throwing at some point, it’ll go away, it’ll get better,” Hendriks told himself.

By June, the pain was too much to bear. He made an appearance on June 6, 2023 and then he was shut down. Two months later, he had Tommy John surgery.

That offseason, Hendriks was a free agent and signed a two-year deal with the Red Sox, with the understanding he’d spend most of 2024 recovering from surgery. He made it into six rehab games late in the second half last season, but with the Red Sox out of the playoff race, they opted not to push him to return to the major leagues.

This spring, Hendriks dug deep once again, hoping to fight for the closer’s role alongside Aroldis Chapman. With a major-league return so close to materializing, Hendriks tried to pitch through more pain in camp. His results suffered and he was placed on the 15-day injured list at the start of the regular season. He visited the doctor who performed his Tommy John surgery in Texas during Boston’s season-opening series against the Rangers. To Hendriks’ relief, the elbow was fine and a cortisone shot was prescribed to relieve a compressed nerve.

He returned to throwing a week later and felt instant relief. He made three minor-league rehab outings and showed increased life on his fastball. The Red Sox activated the 36-year-old on Saturday. At long last, Hendriks was back on a major-league active roster.

Throughout the rehab process, Hendriks didn’t doubt that he’d have the stamina to make a full recovery from the elbow surgery, but he did wonder along the way if he’d be able to return to be even a fraction of the three-time All-Star pitcher he’d been in the past.

“There were a couple days (of doubt),” he said. “Not whether it would happen, but it was just like how effective I would be? And that’s something that’s always going to linger, regardless if I’m healthy for however many days in a row. You got to make sure that you go out there every day and you don’t take your foot off the pedal.”

A former closer, Hendriks has made a career pitching in high-leverage situations. He owned 116 saves in 476 career games entering Sunday, but it was that 477th outing that was undoubtedly his most anticipated appearance. He joked that the 681-day layoff felt more like 1,000 days. But now that recovery was finally in the rearview mirror.

With the first outing out of the way, Hendriks’ focus has turned to just baseball and what he can do to bolster the Red Sox bullpen. A clean first appearance back would have been nice, but Hendriks knows better than anyone life isn’t perfect.

“I’ve got to do my job and show these guys that they can feel confident going to me in any situation,” he said.

(Top photo of Hendriks during his return: Eric Canha / Imagn Images)

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.