NEW YORK – When Edward Cabrera officially hit the injured list with a hamstring strain Wednesday, the Cubs had 80 percent of their Opening Day starting rotation and their closer on the shelf.
It’s hard to win a World Series when dealt that kind of hand.
And to make a real bad situation even worse, Cabrera wasn’t even the only Cubs starter to hit the IL on Wednesday, with the team putting righty Ben Brown – who’s been excellent in fill-in duty – on the shelf with a neck strain.
If Cabrera’s visible pain and trip off the field via cart Tuesday night wasn’t enough to have some fans seeing the Cubs’ season flashing before their eyes, Wednesday’s news surely did the trick.
Injuries are a part of the game, sure. But this big a part? What team could survive this?
“It always seems the worst in the present,” injured right-hander Jameson Taillon told the Sun-Times on Wednesday. “I’ve been on teams with a lot of unfortunate injuries, but this is crazy.”
“I’ve truly never really been a part of something like this, this extreme and drastic,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said after the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. “It’s been like, ‘Holy catfish, this is pretty crazy.’”
Imaging revealed a moderate hamstring strain for Cabrera, who figures to be sidelined for weeks.
Taillon is still weeks away from returning from his own hamstring injury. Righty Cade Horton is done for the year with Tommy John surgery. And team president Jed Hoyer, in a Tuesday radio interview, threw cold water on the idea of lefty Justin Steele making a return to the rotation this season.
“We’re in a rough spot,” manager Craig Counsell said in the immediate wake of Cabrera’s injury Tuesday night.
There has been positive word on Taillon’s progress, and lefty Matthew Boyd will make his long-awaited return from the IL on Thursday to pitch in the series finale with the Mets. Left-hander Shota Imanaga has returned to form after an ugly stretch.
The rest of the puzzle, though, must be completed with fill-in pieces.
“We’re going to be piecing it together,” Counsell said after a 10-3 win in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, “and that’s just how it’s going to work.”
Brown already was the proverbial “next man up,” stepping in from the bullpen to post the best pitching numbers on the team. Coming into Wednesday, his 1.85 ERA was the fifth best in baseball among pitchers with at least 60 innings.
But Brown’s neck, which had been bothering him since his start in San Francisco a week and a half ago, got to the point where he couldn’t throw a bullpen session Tuesday, and the team IL’d him and sent him to Chicago to visit with doctors.
Counsell said there is some concern this injury could be related to the one that knocked Brown out for the second half of the 2024 campaign.
Righty Javier Assad has been effective since returning from the minor leagues, while righty Colin Rea hasn’t been as good as he was in substitute duty a season ago.
There don’t seem to be too many good options beyond the major league roster, either. Lefty Jordan Wicks was quickly jettisoned back to the minor leagues after a brief big league cameo in which he gave up 11 runs in 6 1/3 innings.
On Wednesday, the team called up righty Vince Velasquez and added righty Bryse Wilson on a waiver claim.
It puts the onus on Hoyer’s front office to bolster the pitching staff before the trade deadline in early August. But will a wildly depleted pitching staff hang on long enough to keep the Cubs in buy mode?
“Look, man, a lot of bad stuff’s happened. We get to make our own story from it,” Counsell said before Wednesday’s doubleheader. “And it gets a little tougher. But stack the chips against us, whatever you want to say. That’s fine.
“Circle the wagons, let’s go. These are our guys. That’s the attitude you take, and it’s what we’re going to try to do.”