The Cubs will not be getting reliever Julian Merryweather back from the injured list for the last weeks of the season as they had originally hoped.
Merryweather is scheduled to have season-ending knee surgery Friday, manager Craig Counsell announced Thursday. The team anticipates Merryweather recovering from the procedure, a right patellar tendon debridement, in time for spring training.
“The knee has been an issue for most of the season here,” Counsell said before the Cubs opened a four-game series against the Nationals. “And it just didn’t get over the hump here to merit him pitching for the rest of the season. So surgery has kind of always been an option here since we went on the IL, and we determined at this point to go forward with it.”
Merryweather, poised to pitch in high-leverage spots going into the season, only pitched 15 innings. He spent 3½ months on the injured list with a stress fracture in a rib on his right side. And then he was only active for about a month before landing on the injured list again in late August, this time with tendinitis in his right knee.
He is the fifth Cubs reliever to have his season ended by injury, joining Adbert Alzolay (Tommy John surgery), Yency Almonte (shoulder surgery), Luke Little (lat strain) and Ben Brown (neck). Injuries to back-end relievers also contributed to the Cubs’ May and June slump.
“When the leverage pieces get taken away quickly, that’s harder to address,” Counsell said. “There’s no question about it. And it requires, certainly, more work. But it’s also a lesson in the importance of having solutions and plans to make sure that you do your best to cover for it or to keep the situation as usable and successful as possible.”
Merryweather has managed the issue with his right knee off and on his whole professional career. But this year was the first time he went on the injured list at the major-league level for a right knee injury.
Even last season, when Merryweather pitched the most relief innings (72) he’d ever pitched in a pro season, he remained available late in the year as the Cubs had a spike in reliever injuries.
This year, he dealt with the knee issue from early on, and his mechanics never quite felt in sync.
He only had allowed one run in 4⅔ innings when he landed on the injured list the first time. Recovering from the stress fracture became the priority. But when he returned, his knee injury began to flare up at unpredictable times.
He had three consecutive scoreless appearances in mid-to-late August and said he felt good. But in his next outing, he allowed four runs and five hits in an inning against the Marlins. Soon after, he landed on the injured list.
The effects of Merryweather’s knee injury could be seen in a drop in velocity. Last season, his fastball sat comfortably at 98 mph; this year, it averaged 96. And in Merryweather’s last start, it dropped to 93.7. As he tried to compensate for the injury, his command wavered, as well.
“It’s one of those tricky things where nobody wants surgery,” Counsell said. “You don’t want to have surgery if you don’t have to. But at some point, it affects you to the point where it’s not getting better, and there are some [effects of] having a hard time getting into a delivery you want because of the injury, not recovering the right way because of the injury. So it just starts to affect too much, and that’s when you have to say, ‘I’ve got to go get it fixed.’ ’’