Things were feeling a lot like May and June on Monday at Wrigley Field, with ample injury news and the Crosstown-rival White Sox on the schedule, challenging for intra-city supremacy.
While the Wrigleyville buzz was about a rare late-season clash between playoff-dreaming teams from both sides of town, the Cubs were hit with bigger-picture problems, sending their starting shortstop and their big offseason trade acquisition to the injured list in the middle of a playoff race.
After he left Sunday’s game following an uncomfortable swing, the Cubs learned shortstop Dansby Swanson has a left oblique strain, one that manager Craig Counsell said is expected to keep the shortstop out for four weeks.
The Cubs are confident they’ll get Swanson — a Gold Glove defender who ranked fourth on the team with 18 homers coming into Monday — back for the home stretch of the regular season and the playoffs, but they’ll have to figure out a way to keep their best-in-baseball defense humming without him.
The everyday shortstop job will go to second baseman Nico Hoerner in the meantime, with reserve infielder Pedro Ramirez taking over everyday duties at second base.
Hoerner will have to reacclimate himself to shortstop; he came into Monday with only 36 appearances there in the last three seasons. Ramirez, meanwhile, will get to show what he can do as an everyday player after hitting .299/.353/.441 in his first 140 big league plate appearances as a part-time player.
“Pedro’s a good player, bottom line,” Counsell said. “I told you out of spring training, if Pedro has to come and play every day in April, I’m good with it. This is after 130 major league at-bats where he’s really performed. He’s more than ready for this.”
Utility man Matt Shaw, who’s had his own lengthy IL stay with a nagging hand sprain, could return soon, with Counsell saying a good day Monday could lead to the start of a minor league rehab assignment later this week.
Swanson’s absence will be one of the few to affect a Cubs position player this season, with the vast majority of the team’s injuries — and there have been a lot of them — impacting the pitching staff.
The hurlers couldn’t avoid further misfortune Monday, though, with righty starter Edward Cabrera going to the IL with a blister on a finger on his throwing hand.
Cabrera — who the Cubs dealt for in the winter, sending top-rated outfield prospect Owen Caissie to the Marlins in a win-now move — was roughed up in his return from a nearly two-month absence Sunday, surrendering seven runs to the rival Cardinals in his first major league outing since suffering a hamstring injury in late June.
It’s been a question how Cabrera would fit into a suddenly overcrowded Cubs rotation following the front office’s trades for righties Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes at the deadline earlier this month. Most baseball folks, Counsell included, would have told you that this stuff tends to figure itself out, and indeed, it seems Cabrera might have made his final start of the season.
The team has a “working plan” to bring him back from this injury as a bullpen arm, seeing a possible trend that blisters — which sent him to the IL earlier this season, too — seem to be affecting him during longer outings. Shorter stints, like those by bullpen arms, could be a solution to keeping him healthy enough to pitch.
“We’re hoping can have the blister behind us,” Counsell said. “He’s dealt with this and pitched with this. One of the things we’re thinking: It doesn’t pop up, necessarily, in bullpens, when the volume is lower. Maybe we can make some progress there, and that can be a fix, at least, for the last six weeks here.”
“A hundred percent I’d go to the bullpen,” Cabrera said through an interpreter Monday. “The important thing is to be here and to be able to help the team. If they were to ask me to come out of the bullpen, I’d happily do it.”
But Cabrera has struggled to be effective whenever he’s been on the mound this season, the owner of an ugly 5.68 ERA after Sunday’s troublesome start.
“It hasn’t clicked,” Counsell said. “I wish every story was a success story. This one, right now, is not. We’re going to keep working on trying to find answers there and trying to find solutions. It’s something that’s very important.”
“When things are going well, you’re not really worried about anything else,” Cabrera said. “But whenever you start thinking that things aren’t necessarily going as well, that’s the time where you have to keep working.”
Cabrera was reinserted into the Cubs’ rotation upon his Sunday return. This IL trip creates a new opening, perhaps easily filled by the return of lefty David Peterson, who was moved to the bullpen Sunday. Counsell said that decision will come later.
The Cubs brought Javier Assad back from Triple-A Iowa a day after Cabrera took his roster spot. Additionally, reserve infielder Owen Miller and outfielder Kevin Alcantara came up from the minors, with infielder James Triantos going down to the I-Cubs.
