The Red Sox have declined their end of a $12MM mutual option for right-hander Liam Hendriks, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive. The former closer will take a $2MM buyout and return to free agency.
The decision doesn’t come as a surprise, as Hendriks has hardly pitched over the past three years. In 2023, a battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma kept him out of action for a while. He eventually won that battle and was declared cancer-free, only to require Tommy John surgery after just five innings pitched.
He reached free agency going into 2024 and the Red Sox signed him to a two-year deal with a $10MM guarantee. That took the form of a $2MM salary in the first year, a $6MM salary in the second, followed by the aforementioned option and buyout. The Sox knew they might not get any contributions from Hendriks in the first year but were hoping their investment would pay off in the second, with Hendriks ideally returning to his previous elite closer form.
It didn’t work out that way. Hendriks missed the entire 2024 season and then elbow problems lingered into the following year. He spent most of 2025 on the injured list, only throwing 13 2/3 innings. He underwent ulnar nerve transposition surgery in September and has an uncertain timeline.
Hendriks will presumably be focused on getting healthy for a while. He will celebrate his 37th birthday in February. He’ll be a candidate for another bounceback deal at some point, though the shape of that deal will depend upon his future health outlook.
Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze, Imagn Images
Might be time for Liam to hang it up. I’d be surprised to see him get anything other than a minor league deal with a ST invite. If his playing days are indeed over, he’s got a great voice for broadcasting.
He really lucked out on this last contract being a major league deal, it pushed him over the golden 10 year service time mark.
I could see him wanting to sign with a team for access to rehab and trainers, but, like you said, itd be shocking to see anything more than a split contract paying different rates for time in the minors and majors at best
Meow – I agree with Liam, he didn’t go through TJS just a couple years ago so he can retire now. I hope he keeps battling and beats the odds.
Then comes home and puts into developing the game down here.
I’d like to see the Red Sox put together a trade package for MacKenzie Gore and CJ Abrams. What would it take?
Fan – It would take Rafaela, Tolle, Password and Witherspoon.
Fever, I think more.
Roman Anthony, Franklin Arias, Luis Perales, & Kyson Witherspoon for Paul Skenes. Who says yes or no?
Crocket, Skenes, Bello, & Tolle would be the best pitching staff in all of baseball for years. I can see the Red Sox winning 1 or 2 World Series with them.
2222 – I’m actually a Gore fan, i think hes an incredible talent. But, he has a difficult time getting through five innings in most starts and has a career WHIP of 1.4
This year there will be better SP’s available through trade
No interest in Abrams at all, he was suspended from team and demoted for missing multiple curfews while casino gambling
As I just posted, I think it would cost even more and I too would not give up so much for them given the likely lockout.
No surprise there. What a mistake that signing was. Seemed like a nice guy though.
Steve – One of many similar mistakes.
Remember Adalberto Mondesi? The Red Sox paid him $3M to NOT play for them in 2023.
Paxton was another disastrous 2-year signing.
Who’s gonna be the next bust, Sandoval?
I know it wasn’t a smashing success and I wouldn’t redo the contract, but I don’t know that Paxton deserves the Mondesi/Sandoval treatment. Before he got lit up his last few starts in ’23 he had a 3.3-something ERA and 4-ish FIP, and he really hit a groove mid-summer.
More to the point, Hendricks was a regret but you can’t root against the guy. Whether on the field, in the booth, or with his family, wish him the best in what’s next
dirty – I agree Paton pitched well at first, but in the end he got $10M for 96 innings of 4.50 pitching.
Fever, we can’t armchair QB every decision. Like it or not, Henry looks for value and sometimes they don’t work out. He has his staff run everything into the computer and looks to gain an advantage sort of like building a roster using the MLB TV shredder. He makes a killing once and then tries to replicate the deal.
dewey – Talking about the moves a front office makes is a part of the fun of being a fan!
Yeah Henry made his fortune using analytics to trade commodities, but baseball players aren’t the same thing as pork bellies …. they are humans.
The problem is, how many Sox championships has he won by being cheap? None. He spent quite a bit for the 4 Sox championships. He will need to do the same if he wants the Sox to be serious contenders for several years.
Fever- none of them as bad as the Rusney Castillo debacle.
smk – True! Even Crawford and Panda earned a greater percentage of their contracts.
Fever, I blame MLB and the grandfather clause. Rusney was never going to be worth the contract but was an MLB level player buried in the minors due to a loophole. He’s one that I’m glad got paid. I consider the Panda deal far worse. More money spent and it was 1,000 percent Panda’s own fault.
Fever – Mondesi was one move Bloom made I was always ok with.
There was plenty of ceiling there, and it was a dirt cheap (comparatively) contract.
The problem was the lack of signing quality plan b backup as you didnt know how or when the rehab would resolve itself
Fever- You would think they would learn their lesson with all the money they have wasted on terrible reclamation projects. Very few of these players have provided anything substantial to the team. Let’s move on from that phase and pay up for healthy players. I wonder how much money they have wasted over the last five years or so on these bad gambles.
Same goes for getting bottom of the barrel players like May. I still don’t understand why they would go over the luxury tax threshold for someone who was at best a #5 pitcher. They likely would have had better results keeping Buehler which is not saying much. If they are going to trade prospects get a difference maker like they did with Crochet.
Extremely well said. It is just mind blowing how much time and resources they’ve wasted over the years piddling around with all these nothingburgers. Why DFA Buehler and trade a prospect to get exactly what you were getting from Buehler? I know us average Joes can get carried away as armchair GMs sometimes but anyone with half a brain can see how moves like that defy any reasonable logic.
Dirty – It’s because ownership suffers from “Smartest Person In The Room” syndrome. They think they can turn a huge profit like the Dodgers but also spend like a mid-market team.
And they think they can “fix” every crappy pitcher.
But Red Sox Nation remembers ….. they won their 4 championships by SPENDING and acquiring TALENT., not by taking flyers on reclamation projects.
Absolutely. It’s both an ego problem and a cheapness problem.
Yes,I agree.Find players who won’t get hurt.Can’t help a team on the injured list.
Uncle – the May trade is pretty easily explained.
Crochet was blowing away his career high in innings, and, the prior year he did *not* do well when pushing IP to new limits in CHW.
Then you has your nominal #2, Giolito, who is suspect they knew earlier than let on he was starting to have mild symptoms and managing through it.
You had lost Houck, and you had a mix of untested young arm on the farm who would be pushing IP limits of their own.
May was a mix of insurance policy and help for the rotation. Did it work? No. But did you notice what the asking prices were on SP at the deadline based on successful bidders? Heck, look at all the arms the Yankees brought in and how their results were mixed at best.
Supposedly they offered more for Ryan than they thought they should, and, it wasn’t enough. But Ryan also fell off a cliff so, had he been acquired for a much steeper price i think the complaints would be the same.
If they had acquired a pitcher who was a clear upgrade over what we had and it simply didn’t work out that would be one thing.
Buehler up to that point had pitched 89 innings to a 5.72 ERA and 5.8 FIP with 71/41 K/BB and he had coughed up 18 home runs.
May was at 104 IP with a 4.85 ERA/4.74 FIP and 97/43 K/BB with 16 home runs allowed.
May was also performing miserably in July so it’s not like he was looking like he was at some inflection point or on the verge of some kind of breakthrough. With a 3.57 ERA and 1.41 WHIP, July was arguably the best month of Buehler’s Red Sox tenure.
They’ve also both had multiple elbow surgeries so there was no reason for anyone to believe one was going to be more durable than the other.
They were for all means and purposes the same crappy pitcher having the same crappy season. Down the stretch after the trade, May gave them exactly what Buehler had been giving them prior to being DFA’ed. As everyone and anyone could and should have seen coming. There was no reason whatsoever to give up a prospect to get May just so they could say they did “something”, that is hogwash.
Those numbers sound like an upgrade to me, and, we dont know the backstory if the pitching gurus had ideas they wanted to ‘fix’ May and he didnt buy in…. lots of speculation.
But look at your own numbers:
5.72era, 5.8fip, 71/41 k/w (1.73 k:w ratio)
4.85era, 4.74fip, 97/43 k/w (2.26 k:w ratio)
In a league where your league average is 4.15 era (that would be your average #3 pitcher, with some #3s doing better, and some worse than that), one guy is a very low #3/high #4 and the other is a mop-up level guy not really performing well enough to hold a full time rotation spot.
It shows as an upgrade…. no, its not replacing a guy who is a #5/6 level with a #2. But, on paper it was more than just doing something to say you did something IMO
Pointing out May had a better looking ERA and FIP is missing the point. Okay, sure, they were a full run better. They were still not anything approaching “good” or even “decent” by league standards and had the same issues with walks (4.4 BB/9 vs. 3.7 BB/9), home runs (16 vs 18), and inability to work deep into games.
Buehler had an ERA+ of 75 in his Red Sox tenure. May’s was 77. That only represents an upgrade in the most literal, semantic sense of the word. There was no meaningful difference in what either guy had to offer. Certainly nothing to justify giving up a pair of 22 year olds over. It does not take a seasoned baseball executive with an Ivy League stats degree to recognize that.
Hindsight is 20/20. Not every move works out, but, on paper it was reasonable to expect May to have the potential to offer more than Buehler had to that point, and May’s FIP wasn’t that far removed from a true middle of the rotation starter at that point either.
And again, we dont know what the pitching department thought they mightve been able to do.
Leaguewide more trades this deadline didnt pan out than did, with other clubs giving up a *lot* more to acquire their failed attempts.
Id rather have the front office try, and wind up with some swings and misses, than return to the Bloom days when they just did nothing, clutching their pearls to hoard prospects just in case it doesnt work… then letting guys walk, DFAing, and losing to Rule 5 because they accumulated too many non-elite prospects to protect
In my mind the upgrade from May to Buehler was not significant enough to go over the luxury tax threshold and give up a prospect who could be used in a more significant trade in the offseason. May just seemed like another #4 or 5 pitcher taking the same position as Buehler even if his stats were slightly better.
May had a very limited upside, so if they were really all in for the playoffs and not worried about the luxury tax they should have overpaid for players like Naylor or Bieber (granted Bieber would be a gamble but with a much higher upside than May).
I don’t know if that would have been enough to get them to the World Series, but after releasing Buehler they really limited themselves as far as having enough pitching to push further into the playoffs. Obviously they could not predict that May would be injured, so they were counting on him to hold down the back end of the rotation.
I agree that they probably would have gotten Ryan if the asking price was not unreasonable. Would be curious to know what they wanted in return.
Hopefully they find their #2 starter in the offseason.
Uncle – I totally agree, it’s absolutely asinine what the Sox have been doing. They are paying players to recover from injury, and then paying them for their projected return season in which you KNOW they will likely need a few months to work off the rust and ramp up.
Really you can put Giolito in the same category if they had realized the reason he sucked in 2022/2023 was because of an underlying injury.
Now LOOK at how Cleveland did it with John Means. Did they sign him to a large guaranteed two-year contract? Hell no!!! They gave him a one year $1M contract to rehab this year, and then a $6M team option for next year.
That’s how it should be done with injured pitchers if a team insists on signing them.
You’re absolutely correct hindsight is 20/20. But they also could’ve used foresight to see there was no reason to believe May was going to come in and give them anything better than Buehler had been.
Now your other point that maybe the team thought they could fix him and he either didn’t buy in or was broken beyond repair is a point I am willing to concede is fair and a better reason for trying an acquisition. But I would still also make the counter argument that those type of experiments are better suited for the offseason when you have down time and all of spring training to switch their pitching program and work with them on whatever changes you’re trying to implement. Not such a great idea when you’re desperate for quality starts in the middle of a playoff race as your starting 5 drags you precariously close to letting a wild card slip out of your grip.
Dirty – You nailed it ….. teams shouldn’t take a chance on “fixing” a pitcher mid-season when they are fighting for a playoff berth.
There’s a reason nobody acquired Cease at the deadline, because he sucked in the first half. As it turned out, he sucked in August too (although he did pitch better in Sept).
It’s high time for Breslow to stop wasting millions on broken players, if he’s so bent on it at least try someone like Brandon woodruff
Tar – Funny thing is Breslow did NOT want to give Sale another chance last year ….. obviously it was a horrible decision.
Fever – even Sale was on record as saying prior to the trade he expected to hang up his spikes most likely following the season had he not been traded.
Hindsight is 20/20… would I have traded Sale? Nope, but, part of that is he was my favorite player on the team.
Can I accept Breslow’s reasoning for doing it? Sure, believe i said so at the time.
Was i happy with the return? NOPE – I believe I was one of Grissom’s biggest critics here on the board at the time he was acquired.
I hope this finally ends the “Pay for two years, pitch for one” obsession the Red Sox had with rehabbing pitchers.
If not Sandoval will…..
Chris Sale pitched a little over 150 innings in just 4 yrs 2020 thru 2023 with the Red Sox.He needed a change of scenery and it resurrected his career.A great pitcher who went to a team with less pressure.Staying in Boston wouldn’t have been good for him.
Mets should take a flyer on him. Can’t be worse than Helsley.
Any team with an invite to spring training including Boston and the Mets could be involved. He’s not getting an MLB contract so the questions are does he have a preference where he wants to train (AZ or FL), does he want to stay in the Northeast should he make the big league club and if he doesn’t, will they release him from the deal if he wants to look elsewhere if he doesn’t?
Hendriks was quite vocal about his dissatisfaction with his role in Boston. To be fair, his performance didnt warrant the types of opportunities and prestige role he had earlier in his career, but, he seemed to struggle with the reality of being utilized according to his demonstrated abilities.
For those reasons I dont see him being as interested in a return to Boston, although, you never know if theres just no interest elsewhere
You never know GA but I think when evaluating himself, he will as you mentioned realize he didn’t deserve more or better opportunities. I’m thinking though he feels with more T line, he can still pitch. Thus, should there be an offer to go camp, he’ll take it.