The Boston Red Sox's signing of Liam Hendriks to a two-year, $10 million deal in 2024 was always kind of a weird move, given that they did it knowing he could be unavailable throughout the season while recovering from Tommy John. Hendriks is a three-time All-Star, two-time Cy Young votes recipient, and even picked up MVP votes in 2020, but it still meant that Boston would be paying him millions of dollars not to pitch.
He's good to go this year and has pitched a few innings in spring training so far while he looks to hit multiple incentive benchmarks to increase his earnings in 2025. Some of those incentives include the number of games he finishes; he could make an extra $5 million with 45, 50, 55, 60, and 65 games finished.
However, the Red Sox's addition of Aroldis Chapman this offseason means that Hendrik's role as the closer is far from assured. Chapman also had a rough go of things in 2024 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but he's looked a lot better in spring training so far.
Hendriks didn't do himself any favors with his latest outing in Sox spring training on Wednesday. He replaced none other than Chapman in the fifth inning and gave up three singles to load the bases with just one out, and one of them came around to score on another single from Eloy Jiménez.
Red Sox closer competition:
— Boston Strong (@BostonStrong_34) March 5, 2025
Aroldis Chapman
2.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 4 K
Liam Hendriks
2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 0 BB, 3 K
Liam Hendriks floundering in spring training could pave Aroldis Chapman's way to the Red Sox's closer role
Chapman, by contrast, pitched a totally clean fourth inning with a strikeout looking and two groundouts. This kept his spring ERA at 0.00 after pitching 1 ⅔ hitless innings in two preceding appearances. Hendriks' ERA, meanwhile, has risen to 12.00 with three innings under his belt. On March 3, he took over for Walker Buehler in the third and got to two outs before giving up a three-run homer to Jose Siri.
There's also the issue of money; Chapman ($10.75 million) is guaranteed far more than Hendriks in 2025, and he's just pitching more like a closer than Hendriks so far.
Hendriks still has time to clean up his act a little, but Chapman's already pulled far ahead in this race. There are still ways for Hendriks to maximize his 2025 salary with innings pitched, but he'll need to pitch a lot better than this just to stay in the bullpen, much less become the closer.