WASHINGTON — Cole Henry had to push through.

The mild-mannered 25-year-old missed most of 2021 and 2022 with elbow injuries — and he was later revealed to have thoracic outlet syndrome, the same affliction that ended Stephen Strasburg’s career. That led to an off-and-on 2023. So that pinch in his armpit last spring? He told himself it wasn’t an injury. Couldn’t be. And frankly, if it was, he didn’t care.

He kept pitching until he couldn’t anymore.

Last May, he was diagnosed with a mild strain of his lat muscle. A month later, when he was supposed to return, he couldn’t get his right arm to whip forward.

“Like my body was trying to protect myself,” Henry said.

He would grunt, clench his teeth and the radar gun would read 86 mph. Imaging revealed a strain in both his lat and triceps muscles. His season was over early. Again.

“I’m just sitting in the room in (Double-A) Harrisburg with my wife, and, like, I don’t know what’s going on,” Henry said. “Like, I just can’t seem to catch a break. I feel like I do as much as I possibly can to try to stay healthy and be on the field. But it just doesn’t work out the way you plan sometimes.

“So yeah, I think at that point I was kind of like, ‘Eff this,’” he said. “Maybe my baseball dreams were starting to come to a close.’”

Eleven months later, not only are his baseball dreams not over — they’re fully realized. Sure, he never imagined his first appearance in the majors would be out of the bullpen. He was LSU’s ace not so long ago and didn’t convert to a full-time role in relief until this spring. He’s been one of baseball’s best relievers since. Across his first two months in the majors, Henry has a 2.14 ERA and has not allowed a run in 17 of his 18 appearances. He held opponents to a .070 batting average in May.

“He just goes out there like he’s 10 feet tall,” teammate Zach Brzykcy said.

“He doesn’t seem overwhelmed by any moment,” closer Kyle Finnegan said.

“I think he’s known that it was the health that really slowed him down a little bit,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “His stuff is good. The fact that he’s coming up here now and doing what he’s doing doesn’t really surprise me. But I’m happy for him, because he endured a lot trying to get here. Now it’s all about keeping him healthy.”

After four years on the injured list, though, Henry has had to wrestle with the idea that an injury could be right around the corner. Teammates, more or less, understand what he’s going through.

“It’s always in the back of your mind, that you were hurt, and that what you’re doing right now is what hurt you in the first place,” said Brzykcy, who went under the knife in April 2023 for Tommy John surgery. “Other guys I talked to, one of the main things they said is not to baby it. It’s fixed. It’s good. You’ve done all this stuff to get back to where you are. So just trust it and let it rip, pretty much.”

For Henry, reaching the point where he could “let it rip” was a mental battle more than a physical one. He talked the situation through with his dad, Jeff, a former minor league pitcher who worked two or three jobs at a time, sunup to sundown, to provide for his family. He missed vacations, Henry said, “just to make sure we were happy.”

His advice, then, was rather obvious and on the nose — sulking wasn’t going to solve anything. Henry talked it through with his wife, Brinley, who allowed him to be vulnerable. They would take their dogs on long walks, keeping everything in perspective.

Finally, Henry saw a fork in the road. The future was fuzzy at the end of both. Down one path, the one where he quit, he knew he would look back on this time and think, “What was I doing?” Down the other, he saw himself reaching back to throw a fastball, then trying to put something extra on his slider.

He was going to try that. He was going to leave it up to fate. Harder than it sounds? Not quite, Henry said.

This spring, Henry was finally, completely, healthy. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself anymore. The organization sent him to Harrisburg, then called him up to Rochester before he could even throw a pitch. A week later, he was on a flight to Miami for his debut. (He profusely credited and thanked his wife for making sure all that travel went smoothly.)

Since then, the Nationals have liked what they’ve seen. Henry’s fastball cuts to the arm-side six inches more than that of the average reliever. His curveball cuts more than two feet in the opposite direction. Though his walk rate (10.3%) is a touch higher than one would want, FanGraphs’ Location+ model says he is one of the best in baseball when it comes to putting his pitches in the right place.

He’s earned the respect of his peers, alongside fellow young relievers Brad Lord and Jackson Rutledge.

Now, after all that turmoil, he runs out from Washington’s bullpen — in increasingly higher leverage — with Green Day’s “Brain Stew” blaring at his back and not a hint of fear in his eyes.