Chicago White Sox reliever Liam Hendriks taking the ‘wait and see’ approach with right elbow inflammation – The Denver Post

Liam Hendriks first felt something not quite right in his right elbow around May 4, the day the Chicago White Sox reliever left to begin his rehab assignment with Triple-A Charlotte.

“It’s been sore for the last few weeks, ever since before my rehab assignment it was barking, but my mantra is to pitch things until I can’t,” Hendriks said Tuesday at Dodger Stadium. “It kept getting a little worse and worse and worse until the last couple of outings I wasn’t able to pitch through that pain.

“The more I throw, generally the better I feel. And this time, it wasn’t going away. It was lingering.”

The Sox placed Hendriks on the 15-day injured list Saturday with right elbow inflammation, the team announced Sunday morning.

“Structurally, it’s fine,” Hendriks said. “It’s all good. Or goodish for me. But it’s just a little inflammation that’s sitting on one of the wrong spots. Trying to get that eradicated. Take a week off throwing and reevaluate then.”

Hendriks and manager Pedro Grifol said there wasn’t a timetable.

“He feels good,” Grifol said Tuesday. “He’ll continue to see the doctors and do his thing. We’re optimistic about it but we’ll see. It’s one of those where it will take a little bit but at least there’s some optimism that he might be back.”

Hendriks used the phrase “wait and see.” And Grifol agreed. The reliever is 2-0 with one save, a 5.40 ERA and three strikeouts in five appearances since his return on May 29 after his absence for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“I need to be cognizant of the way my body reacts and feels with everything,” Hendriks said. “Just due to the fact I still don’t have the strongest immune system and there’s a lot of other things going on in my body.”

Last season, Hendriks went on the IL on June 11 with a flexor strain in his right forearm and returned July 4.

“There’s no strain down there,” Hendriks said. “Just a little bit of fluid build up back here. It’s sitting on the origin of it. Hopefully we get that out of there and it’s all back to normal from there.

“The doc said the ligament actually looked a little better this year than it did last year, which is nice to hear. Take that for what it’s worth. Shut down for throwing for a little bit, but hopefully get this back and I don’t miss to much time.”

Hendriks publicly revealed his cancer diagnosis on Jan. 8, completed treatment April 3 and announced he was cancer-free April 20. Hendriks did some baseball work while undergoing treatment at spring training and made his first appearance for Charlotte on May 5.

He did not think his ramp-up contributed.

“I threw more bullpens and was throwing for longer than everyone else,” Hendriks said. “I don’t think there’s any correlation with me ramping up too quickly or anything like that. I think the potential of the chemo still being in my system and not kind of letting me recover as well as I would have hoped, that has some merit to it. But it’s unfortunate the way it went about, but now hopefully it’s a minimal stint on the IL and we can get back to it as soon as I can.”

Hendriks is unsure what led to the setback.

“The last three outings it was constant pain every time I picked up a ball and threw it or anything like that,” he said. “You push through it and hopefully it goes away. This one just wasn’t going away.

“After the game (Friday), I couldn’t quite make a fist and couldn’t quite move too much. That’s when I told everybody how bad it was getting. They were well aware. I get treatment done every day. They were well aware I was not feeling great.”

Hendriks is certain the bullpen will perform well in his absence.

“They dealt with this pretty much all April and most of May,” he said. “For the last couple of months they’ve been doing a really good job and I expect that to continue. And hopefully I’ll be around as much as I can being as much of a cheerleader as I can.”

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