While the seats around the Oakland Coliseum are far removed from the field, certain sections are all up in the action of the bullpens. When I crossed that ballpark off my list in June of 2019, I sat near the mounds on the Athletics' side of the field, where I had an up-close view of the unusually personal relationship the Oakland die-hards had with their relievers.
Liam Hendriks hadn't yet emerged as Oakland's closer at that point. I missed it by a night. He didn't pitch in the game I saw on June 21, but his next appearance in the first of the 39 saves he recorded for the Athletics over his final year and a half in white, green and gold.
Despite the lack of ninth-inning credentials, Hendriks appeared to be the most popular member of the relief corps. He was 3-0 with a 1.49 ERA and 50 strikeouts over 42⅓ innings at the time, which explained part of it. His ease and gregariousness with the rowdy regulars probably had more to do with it.
At least that's how I see it now, based on Hendriks' charming introduction to the White Sox beat crew during the Zoom call announcing his signing. Hendriks will of course have to live up to his four-year, $52 million contract in order to earn the same kind of adoration from White Sox fans, but he did what he could to grease the skids with his quotes.
Here's a sample:
No. 1: "You look at the guys that they've got, you look at how long they've got them for as well, which is another huge thing. At the end of the season my wife and I sat down and did a list of teams, and on paper, the White Sox were the team that I wanted to go to."
No. 2: "[Tony La Russa] is more of that old-school manager, where I like to consider myself somewhat of an old-school pitcher. I want to go out there every single day, I want to get to 85-90 innings out of the pen. That was a big thing for me as well, knowing that there's not going to be limitations on all that. I want to go. If we have a chance to win a game on back-to-back-to-back days or four days in a row or whatever it is, I want to have the ball."
No. 3: "This makes me seem like an egotistical ass, but I want to make sure no matter what happens, I make that deal a bargain."
No. 4: "The downtime between hearing from teams and stuff gave me a lot of time to go down rabbit holes online about which way organizations were doing. I may or may not have read all 90something pages of the SoxTalk blog [editor's note: it's a forum] that was about me, 'cause it was interesting. I wanted to see the fans' perspective, and they were largely positive. White Sox fans were by far the most positive in everything that has transpired that I've seen online. That was another big thing. You see the fan group, you see the fact at how positive they were, and that was a huge contribution to helping us narrow everything down."
No. 5: "My wife likes to call it White Line Fever. So I'm a completely different person on the field than I am off the field. Off the field I tend to be a little more joking around and less intense, and on the field I tend to refer to myself as an egotistical narcissist. I'm on the mound, and it doesn't matter what I'm throwing. Whatever I throw, I'm better than the hitter."
No. 6: "We've been going back and forth on the possibility of monikers. Obviously with my nickname being "Slydah" in Oakland, we figured it meshes well with going with "South Slydah." Just with the South Side, I think it works well. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully there's a Players' weekend where I can throw it on the back of the jersey this year."
Hendriks even found a way to positively spin Rick Renteria's bullpen management in the final game of the wild card series.
"I think Game 3 was a big one for me, even though the White Sox ended up not pulling out the win -- my bad. [laughs] You bring in a group of guys in there, you've got nine 10 pitchers in that game pitching, and it was down to the wire. You don't get that through everybody. You don't get the opportunity for all nine guys to be on that day or have that good stuff.
"I'm sitting in the bullpen where every guy they brought in, we're like, 'They have to be running out of guys soon.' But every guy they brought in had plus stuff, had a good attitude on the mound.
"I'm excited to be a part of it. Obviously you see some of the arms coming up there. I'm excited. Depending on what their plan is with [Garrett] Crochet or some of those guys who throw a little harder, it's going to be a good little measuring stick. At some point I need to throw harder than him, and that's a goal to work towards for me."
You can watch the entirety of Hendriks' appearance on YouTube. If you don't have the time, you can read James Fegan's account of how a bunch of different factors -- the decision to hire La Russa, the willingness to commit to a progressive pitching apparatus with Ethan Katz, last year's signing of Yasmani Grandal -- all culminated in Hendriks finding the White Sox to be the most natural landing spot, start to finish.
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The only sticking point in between Hendriks and Chicago was the fourth year, which the White Sox creatively bridged by making the fourth year a team option that cost as much as the buyout. The only difference is whether the Sox pay $15 million to pitch for them in 2024, or whether they pay him $1.5 million over the next 10 years to go away. (Hendriks said he intends to make exercising it a no-brainer, and Hahn said he's regarding it as a four-year term himself.)
In his portion of the Zoom call, Rick Hahn gave Jerry Reinsdorf credit for the structure.
"Jerry was the one who for years has been raising that concept of an extended spread. My understanding is that it's similar to something that is done in the NBA, or at least used to be done in the NBA, I don't know if it still is under the current collective bargaining agreement, but years ago the Bulls, when they got to the point of cutting ties with a player with a guaranteed contract, they had the ability to spread the money over a number of years.
"Jerry has always mentioned that to us as a device that appealed to him in the right situation, and I think, over the weekend, Friday or Saturday of this past week, he again raised, actually to Kenny, the idea that this might be a way to bridge the gap here on Hendriks."
Hahn's description of Reinsdorf's involvement brought to mind the way the White Sox chairman got involved early in the seminal John Helyar book "Lords of the Realm." Reinsdorf makes an impression as an owner who attempts to discover advantages for management in the player compensation system, and he found a legal success early by offering small raises with team options that suppressed salary trajectories through arbitration. His subsequent attempts to limit player earnings weren't nearly as legit.
We'll see if other teams pick up this strategy, and whether players develop any reason to be suspicious. It appears to be mutually beneficial on its face. Hendriks gets the kind of commitment that top closers receive while the White Sox mitigate the annual impact. If the White Sox don't want to pay him full freight in 2024, Hendriks can pad whatever salaries he gets elsewhere by $1.5 million through each remaining year of his career and beyond.
That was the more interesting way Hahn credited Reinsdorf. I'd already predicted that he was going to praise Reinsdorf for having "the economic wherewithal to pursue premium upgrades to a team we feel is pretty good," even though his maximum individual commitment and 2021 payroll are still well short of the league medians.
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A couple other Hahn quotes circulated around Twitter, but the context of the Zoom call should be presented with them. If you ran into these tweets with no other knowledge of the call, Hahn would come off as sounding satisfied despite liabilities in the rotation, at backup catcher and DH.
But Hahn said that he'd gone out too far on a limb for his comfort when he used the phrase "stay tuned" on a previous call. What he intended as a brief non-answer instead sounded like promised action when nothing was impending.
This time, Hahn chose to sound as though no additional moves were required, saying, "We're going to err on the side of managing and minimizing expectations." Based on the reaction, I'd say he accomplished his goal.
(Photo by Cody Glenn/Icon Sportswire)
