SAN FRANCISCO – Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon didn’t quite pass tests on his hurt left groin Wednesday afternoon.
With the injury wrapped, he said he didn’t feel it at all throwing off a mound. But in the weightroom beforehand, without the support of a wrap, he felt minor discomfort on some exercises.
“If this were the playoffs and I had to take something and wrap it, we’re going right at it,” Taillon said.
But the Cubs have about a month left in the regular season before what they hope will be a deep playoff run. So, in the wake of Taillon leaving his start Sunday with a tight left groin, the Cubs are putting him on the 15-day IL retroactive to Monday and recalling right-hander Javier Assad to take his spot in the rotation, manager Craig Counsell said Wednesday.
“There’s a little something there that we think will resolve itself within the next five to seven days,” Counsell said of Taillon’s injury. “But there’s a start in three days, and if we have him go out there and pitch under that condition, then we’re putting Jamo at risk.”
Assad was the obvious choice to take Taillon’s spot. But because the Cubs optioned him to Triple-A after his start against the Angels on Friday, in order to recall him before he spent the minimum 15 days in the minors, it had to be tied to an IL move.
“If we could skip a start, we’d probably be in good shape,” manager Craig Counsell said. “I expect this to be the minimum. But he’s got a little something going on, and we don’t want to risk it.”
Skipping a start would have meant taxiing the bullpen. The Cubs have both Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks, who have starting experience, on the active roster, but neither is stretched out to shoulder a full starter’s workload.
Assad is scheduled to start Saturday in Colorado, on extra rest. He missed most of the season with a pair of left oblique strains. But in three major-league starts, he’s reclaimed the form that made him a rotation staple last season.
“Knowing that he can come in and take a start, that eases my mind a little bit that I’m not totally screwing the team here,” Taillon said. “Assad’s a very capable big-league starter, so that helped the decision too.”
Taillon still described the injury as “frustrating.” He’s already missed about seven weeks of the season due to a right calf strain. He came back strong, allowing one run in each of his last two starts, against the Brewers and Angels. But a “crampy sensation” in his left groin cut his outing Sunday in Anaheim to five innings.
“In my mind, being a good teammate means taking the ball,” Taillon said. “That’s really important to me, and I hate going on the IL. That being said, the way I had this presented to me was, we’re playing for the long haul here, and you’d be a bad teammate if you really pound the table and push through this and screw the team for what’s really important here.
“If I make something worse and I miss the last couple of weeks of September or the playoffs, all that, that’s not the right thing to do.”
The concern wasn’t just for his groin injury either. The team wanted to avoid a situation where by compensating for a weakened groin Taillon put extra strain on another part of his body.
“I’m not young anymore, and I’ve got some injury history to my name,” said Taillon, 33. “So this was how they presented it to me. These are guys that are good at their jobs, training staff and strength staff and all that, who presented all that to me. And it felt like the right decision.”
Taillon doesn’t expect to de-load at all, but his mid-week bullpen will be pushed back as he waits to be pain-free. He’ll likely make a minor-league rehab start to keep up his conditioning before returning in about two weeks if all goes to plan.