When Hendriks got the ball in the eighth inning of a rain-soaked game against the Minnesota Twins he had a little extra adrenaline going. The White Sox were hanging onto a 4-1 lead despite mustering just three hits. Hendriks needed six outs to record his 22nd save of the season. Usually, when a closer enters the game in a save situation they are amped up as it is. On July 6th game against a fourth-place team shouldn’t be any different. But this team happened to be one that Hendriks hates more than any other team in the league.
When the White Sox landed in Minneapolis for their three-game series against the Twins, Liam Hendriks had one goal in mind. Bury the Twins.The White Sox All-Star closer didn’t just want to beat his former team he wanted, to put them away for good.
Hendriks spent his first three seasons with the Minnesota Twins. While on the other side of the White Sox Twins rivalry, he was trying to break into the league as a starter. They were three seasons Hendriks would like to forget. He posted ERAs of 6.17,5.59 and 6.85 before being claimed off of waivers by three separate teams before returning to the big leagues as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays. Eventually, he found his footing again as a pitcher and emerged as an elite relief pitcher.
After dominating with the Athletics and being named the best closer in baseball by MLB Network he signed a 54 million free-agent deal with the Chicago White Sox. Hendriks earned reliever of the month honors in May and was selected as an American League All-Star, becoming the first Australian-born player to make two All-Star appearances.
Despite his recent success, Hendriks has not put the past in his rearview mirror just yet. He wants to stick it to the Twins for giving up on him.
“You’ve got that bit of extra whatever you want to call it, energy. going into each outing,” Hendriks told NBC Sports Chicago last week. “There’s not too many guys on this team from when I was there, but there’s a couple of them around.
“I still hold a grudge against the former coaching staff…I brought a lot of it on myself. I’m not trying to claim that it was me getting victimized by any means. I butted heads with some of the coaching staff, I butted heads with some of the people there, and now I’m going out there and proving, “No, I still got this and this is what I’m doing against you guys, no matter if you’re there or not.’
Hendriks did just that on Tuesday night. Despite pitching in terrible conditions and facing the toughest part of the order, he struck out the side in the eighth inning. Hendriks froze Jorge Polanco with a curveball, got Nelson Cruz to go fishing in the dirt at a curveball then pulled the string on Alex Kirlloff with another curveball. He struck out his fourth consecutive hitter to open the ninth inning with a 97 mph fastball low and away that Ryan Jeffers had no chance of catching.
Liam Hendriks' 22 saves leads the American League and is the seventh-most in White Sox history before the All-Star Break. pic.twitter.com/xXakpyi4tt
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) July 7, 2021
With the help of some great defense by Billy Hamilton and a weak pop-out to left field, Hendriks was able to record his 22 save of the season. His 22 saves lead the American League and are the seventh most before an All-Star break in White Sox history.
Hendriks has a killer mentality on the mound. He doesn’t care how many pitches or innings he has to throw and loves to scream like a maniac when he is on the hill. He wasn’t always that way.
“Obviously, being DFA’d is never a fun fact,” Hendriks said. “But the thing I take most from my time with the Twins is that my mentality wasn’t good. I was pitching, not necessarily scared, but I was always trying to make the perfect pitch every time rather than being more along the lines of, ‘Hey, look, I’m going to go out there, I’m going to throw strikes, I’m going to get ground balls, I’m going to get outs.’
“And it was just flipping that script of, ‘It doesn’t matter where I throw, he’s going to get out,’ to, ‘Oh crap, I need to make sure I throw it in the right area so he doesn’t get a hit.’ Flipping the script from (giving up) a hit to getting an out was a big thing for me, and that’s the one thing I try to remember whenever I go to Minnesota or whenever we face the Twins because that’s what I bring it back to.”
