Former Twins Pitcher Liam Hendriks Announces Retirement After Remarkable Career

Former Minnesota Twins pitcher Liam Hendriks officially announced his retirement from baseball.

After 14 seasons in the Major Leagues, Hendriks is closing the book on his MLB career that included three All-Star selections, two American League Reliever of the Year awards, and one of baseball’s most remarkable comeback stories.

For Twins fans, Hendriks’ retirement is a situation that is bringing his baseball journey full circle.

Minnesota originally signed the Australian right-hander as an amateur free agent in 2007. He worked his way up through the organization and finally made his MLB debut with the Twins in 2011.

That was just the beginning of his story.

Liam Hendriks’ Career Took Off After Leaving Minnesota

During his first stint with the Twins, Hendriks mainly served as a starting pitcher.

He played in 30 games for the Twins from 2011-13, making 28 starts. But from those trips to the mound, he didn’t make a big enough impression to land a permanent spot in the rotation.

Eventually, Minnesota decided they had seen enough and designated him for assignment after the 2013 season.

For some, that could have been the beginning of the end, but not for Hendriks.

This was actually the beginning of one of the most dramatic transformations in baseball at the time.

Hendriks made stops in Kansas City and Toronto before he finally found a home in Oakland and that’s when the real magic started to happen.

By 2019, he had turned himself into one of the most dominant bullpen arms in baseball.

From 2019 to 2022, Hendriks posted a 2.26 ERA while recording an impressive 114 saves and striking out 359 hitters over 239 innings.

He was selected to three American League All-Star teams during the span and was also selected as the Mariano Rivera AL Reliever of the Year Award in 2020 and 2021.

After watching him during his first trial run with the Twins, it would have been hard to imagine that the man could finish his MLB career with 116 saves and 739 strikeouts across 663.2 innings.

Hendriks the Overcomer

Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Liam Hendriks Credit: Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

What Hendriks did with his career was impressive, but maybe not as much as what he accomplished off the field.

In January 2023, the right-handed reliever announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After undergoing treatment, he announced in April of the same year that he was cancer-free.

Remarkably, he was able to return to the mound in May with the Chicago White Sox.

That heroic effort earned Hendriks the 2023 American League Comeback Player of the Year Award.

Likely from the toll of cancer treatment, injuries were hard to overcome for Hendriks. He underwent Tommy John surgery later in 2023 and eventually went on to sign with the Boston Red Sox after going almost two years away from the mound.

Full Circle With the Twins

In the end, Hendriks came back to where his career started.

The Twins brought Hendriks back in February, when then signed him to a minor league contract with an invite to Spring Training.

Minnesota clearly was hoping that Hendriks could emerge as a late-inning option for a bullpen that started the year without a closer.

That didn’t work.

It didn’t take long for the Twins to make their decision as they released him on March 20. He later went on to sign with the Chicago Cubs on a minor league contract but was released again in July.

The comeback king never made it back to the Majors.

That doesn’t take anything away from what he did in the period between the two Twins stops.

Nearly two decades after Minnesota first signed him, the final chapter has been written and he is closing the book.

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