NEW YORK – When Edward Cabrera officially hit the injured list with a left hamstring strain Wednesday, the Cubs had four-fifths 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.”
The Cubs were still waiting on imaging to inform them of the severity of Cabrera’s hamstring strain Wednesday morning.
Taillon, meanwhile, is still weeks away from his return from a 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.
Boyd’s back, a much needed reinforcement, and 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.
Brown was already that, 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.
Fellow right-hander Javier Assad has been very effective in three straight outings since returning from the minor leagues, with just two runs allowed in 18 innings.
But righty Colin Rea, who potentially could have returned to the bullpen upon Boyd’s return, will now have to stay in the rotation with Cabrera and Brown on the shelf. Will he return to the version who excelled in substitute duty a season ago? The Cubs need him to.
The options beyond the major league roster? There don’t seem to be too many good ones, with only lefty Jordan Wicks springing to mind as an obvious candidate. 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.
Wednesday call-up Vince Velasquez might now be forced into at least a temporary rotation spot with Brown and Cabrera both going down with injuries.
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?
To that point, whether or not you think the Cubs are still capable of catching the Brewers and making a deep October run with their gigantic stack of pitching injuries, they still have to play games for the next three and a half months, quite a significant chunk of the baseball calendar.
“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.”