GOODYEAR, Ariz. – Cubs right-hander Ben Brown has thought through it. What if he could go back to last year, when a “benign area of concern” on his neck — essentially a non-cancerous growth — wiped out more than half of his season?
“I don’t even know if I would do anything different,” the Cubs right-hander said last week. “I’d still want to pitch until I couldn’t pitch anymore. And I’d still try to come back all year, hoping I was going to come back. I think it’s just something that baseball players have to go through. And the biggest thing with injuries, in my opinion, is the way you bounce back from them. And I think the greatest people that we see, even in modern-day baseball, they get hurt, and they come back just as good.”
Brown stretched out to 3 ⅔ innings Thursday in his last start. Although he allowed three runs in the fourth inning, he retired the first nine batters in order.
He has been working on a changeup to add a third element to his pitch mix.
“We made jokes about it,” Brown said, “but right now, I probably feel more comfortable with my changeup than I do with the other two.”
In a normal year, a fifth-starter battle would be heating up the week before Opening Day. But with the Cubs heading to Japan on Tuesday for the two-game Tokyo Series next week, no such decision has to be made. The Cubs are expected to announce the rest of their travel-roster decisions Tuesday morning — including whether they’re going to bring Brown and left-hander Jordan Wicks, two young pitchers in the rotation battle.
With two exhibition games and two regular-season games for Cubs pitchers to cover, length will be important. But the Cubs also don’t need to carry all of their starters on the active roster, or even necessarily on the travel roster.
They’re expected to throw a bullpen game for the first exhibition game and piggyback two starters for the second. Shota Imanaga is slated to start Opening Day, and Justin Steele is in line for Game 2.
Alcantara shakes it off
Outfielder Kevin Alcantara was in the lineup Monday after exiting Sunday’s game as a “precaution.”
“He felt a little shoulder pain on the swing,” manager Craig Counsell said. “Then [we] gave him 15 seconds [and] he was fine, essentially. … He showed up [Monday] feeling perfect.”
Counsell likened the decision to pull Alcantara to the extra-cautious scratching of center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong last week.
In his first at-bat Monday against the Guardians, Alcantara lined a double into center field that had an exit velocity of 109.6 mph, according to Statcast.
Assad update
As expected, right-hander Javier Assad (strained left oblique) will begin the season on the 15-day injured list, Counsell said.
“We’ve got a significant ramp-up to go,” Counsell said of Assad’s bullpen session Saturday. “But all signs are good.”
Cubs 7, Guardians 4
In Shota Imanaga’s last start before the Tokyo Series, he allowed four runs in the second inning, temporarily leaving the game after the seventh batter he faced that inning. But thanks to spring-training rules, he was allowed to re-enter and pitch 4⅓ innings total.
“I think the important part is stacking up those [up-downs],” he said. “But I learned today how much fatigue that is with the longer innings, longer outings.”
• Lefty Jordan Wicks threw four scoreless innings out of the bullpen, relieving Imanaga. Wicks has a 2.08 ERA this spring.
• On deck: Brewers at Cubs, 3:05 p.m. Tuesday, Mesa, Marquee, Jacob Misiorowski vs. Justin Steele.