BOSTON — Considering he hasn’t pitched since May 27, it was not necessarily a surprise Sunday to hear Alex Cora say that the Red Sox aren’t confident reliever Liam Hendriks will pitch again in 2025. Except, apparently, to Hendriks.
Speaking on the Fenway Park field Monday, Hendriks — who has been limited to just 14 appearances over two years in Boston due to various injuries — said he fully intends to return by the end of the season and characterized Cora’s update as a “slip of the tongue.”
“That was surprising. That kind of shook me a little bit,” said Hendriks. “I was like, ‘OK, let me read this thing.’ That was frustrating. It was like, ‘Have they not told me anything that’s going on? Am I out of the loop? What’s going on?’ Everyone I’ve spoken to about this has said, ‘No, we’re pushing to get you back this year.’ You hear that and you’re like, ‘Are they just lying to my face to appease me?’ Which is not the case. It was just a slip of the tongue, unfortunately. It was definitely not a good thing for me to hear. But we hashed it out and we’re all good.
“It’s way too early to say I won’t pitch this year,” he said. “If everything goes well, I will definitely pitch this year as long we keep moving in that direction. I spoke to A.C. about it and it was just a slip of the tongue. He apologized and we’re moving on.”
It has been a long and winding road for Hendriks since he was placed on the injured list with “right hip inflammation” on May 30. Originally, after dealing with discomfort throughout May, he was diagnosed with a sports hernia and prescribed a certain rehab course. As he tried to ramp-up throwing, the issue came back — and worsened. A second opinion revealed that Hendriks instead has been dealing with a strained abdominal side wall, which had worsened every time he tried to push his throwing program forward.
“I saw a different guy and he was like, ‘You’ve got the body of a gorilla but you’ve got the hips of a cheerleader,’” Hendriks said. “I didn’t like that euphemism as much. I like, ‘Your body is a brick (expletive)-house and your door is made out of a sheet.’
“A little bit of the rehab was not necessarily being pushed in the right direction, then I was over-throwing when they told me to throw and re-injuring it consistently.”
Hendriks said he started feeling the discomfort in his midsection during an outing against the Rangers on May 8, when he threw two innings for the first time since recovering from Tommy John surgery. That outing, Hendriks said, was a turning point he found “a little bit” irritating.
“It definitely didn’t help and it was something I wasn’t quite aware I was about to do,” he said of pitching multiple innings. “That was a communication thing.
“My job is to get people out. I’ve always said, ‘If you want me to do anything, you let me know’ instead of letting me know through a (text) chain I don’t look at. I like that face-to-face conversation: ‘Hey, look, we need you to be available for extras (more than one inning)’ … even though that was one thing they told me I didn’t have to do during spring training.
“A couple outings after that, I was sitting 91 (mph). So not a great situation.”
The annoyance over pitching two innings came around the same time Hendriks expressed frustration with the club in an interview with The Boston Globe. On May 21, Hendriks said he had “no idea” what his role in Boston’s bullpen was and that his lack of usage had become a “source of contention” that had necessitated “multiple conversations” with the team.
Nearly two years into his time with Boston, Hendriks said there have been ups and downs when it comes to his relationship with the Red Sox.
“There’s a lot of people in this clubhouse I enjoy,” he said. “The team, the players have been fantastic. The coaching staff, for the most part, has been great. Everybody that works here has been incredible to me, especially with the Red Sox Foundation. They’ve bent over backwards for us.
“Like every organization, there’s things you can work on, whether it be communication stuff like that. But I think they’re trending in the right direction. The more feedback you give and the more feedback you get, hopefully they take that into consideration.”
Hendriks played catch at a distance of 60 feet Monday and expects to keep building up in the coming days and weeks. His arm strength, he said, has remained at a consistent level and his core is getting stronger, too. Hendriks said he is pain-free “for the most part.”
“It comes and goes every now and then, but it’s more like a little bit of pressure rather than what it was, which felt like there was a knot on both sides of my abs,” he said. “Every time I did anything, the knot would push out and push out and yank up together. Not the most fun feeling and it happened every time I overextended my right leg.”
As Cora said Sunday, after noting he “didn’t know if (Hendriks) was going to impact the team this year,” the 36-year-old is more upbeat than he has been at different stages of his rehab. Hendriks missed all of last year as he tried to return from Tommy John surgery and experienced a setback once he started a rehab assignment. The beginning of this season was delayed by a nerve issue in his throwing arm. He signed a two-year, $10 million deal with the Red Sox last February anticipating that he’d contribute more than a 6.59 ERA in 13 ⅔ total innings.
“It’s setback after setback, unfortunately, and it has been frustrating because nothing shows up on the scans and you feel like you’re spinning the wheels a little bit with nothing to gain from it or nothing to show for it,” Hendriks said. “I’ve got a brand new arm. My wife asked me when was the last time I felt like myself. It was April of 2023, post-cancer. I’ve just struggled to recover from the arm.”
Barring an unexpected setback, Hendriks said, he thinks there’s an “100%” chance he returns to pitch late this season. That could be in October if the Red Sox stay rolling and make the postseason.
“It’s good, on the trajectory we’re going, that even if you get back in mid-September, it’s not just two weeks,” Hendriks said. “There’s going to be a longer time to still continue to play. If you’re pushing to try and get back for the two weeks, it’s pure pride. If I’m pushing to get back for two weeks plus, potentially, playoffs, it’s to help this team win.
“I’m trying to not push this as hard as I can which is very grating and hard for me because of my personality. I need to make sure I do this thing the right way. I’m not sure how much I can afford another lost year.”
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