Already down three members of their Opening Day starting rotation, the Cubs now have to figure out life without their closer, too.
Right-hander Daniel Palencia hit the injured list with elbow inflammation Tuesday, the ninth-inning man’s second trip to the IL this season. He was previously sidelined with an oblique injury.
Palencia pitched in the ninth inning of Monday’s walk-off win, at one point receiving an on-field visit from manager Craig Counsell and a trainer. He stayed in the game and struck out three consecutive batters but felt badly enough that the Cubs deemed an IL stint appropriate.
“Coming out of the Colorado game [last] Wednesday, he didn’t feel great,” Counsell explained Tuesday. “We had four days off between outings. He recovered great, felt good going into last night.
“I was just concerned that the body language wasn’t normal. [During the mound visit], he said he was fine, but then he had symptoms afterwards and the elbow didn’t feel great afterwards and didn’t feel good today.”
Asked if the Cubs would have ended up in the same position had Palencia been removed from the game, Counsell agreed they would have.
“The pitcher was like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ And he struck out the side after that. But out of an abundance of caution, it makes sense to put him on the IL,” team president Jed Hoyer said Tuesday. “Certainly, when a manager goes out there for that reason, oftentimes [the player] comes out. He was insistent that he felt great, and he kind of doubled down on that by pitching really well after that.
“But given the conversations after the game, it made sense to IL him.”
Counsell said there was no estimate of how long the Cubs will be without their closer, who emerged as a high-octane weapon in the ninth inning last season, when he saved 22 games and finished the campaign with a 2.91 ERA.
That ERA is even lower this season, at 2.70 through 19 relief appearances. But going nearly a month between outings, from April 12 to May 5, while sidelined with the oblique injury and the Cubs’ 12-23 record in their last 35 games have made save opportunities a rarity, with Palencia notching just three saves.
The Cubs will have to keep doing what they’ve been doing on the pitching front and turn to alternatives.
In the rotation – where Cade Horton, Matthew Boyd, Justin Steele and Jameson Taillon are all still on the IL and Edward Cabrera left early with the trainer Tuesday night – that strategy has yielded mixed results. Now it’s on a cadre of relief arms, many of whom have also dealt with injuries and on-field struggles this season, to fill in for Palencia when save chances come around.
“The guys will have to get their outs,” Counsell said. “It’ll maybe not be the same order every night, but it’ll be the same guys, just in different orders.”
While the Cubs actually came into Tuesday with a lower bullpen ERA this season (3.63) than they did last year (3.78), the need to replace Palencia comes a day after two veterans struggled in the late innings. Phil Maton hit a batter and walked in a run and Caleb Thielbar gave up a three-run homer in Monday’s win.
Life without Palencia might not be as easy as “next man up,” but time will tell.
One more curiosity: How much, if at all, might Palencia pitching for Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic have had something to do with his injuries?
“Who knows? I don’t know, there’s no way to prove or disprove that at all,” Hoyer said. “We discussed at the time that wasn’t the most comfortable thing for the Cubs – or the Brewers, there were a lot of teams that were impacted by the schedule, I would say. But there’s no way to prove or disprove that.
“It is an unusual ramp-up for guys, it’s an unusual time to be doing what they’re doing. And when guys get hurt or guys underperform early in the season, people ask those questions. There’s no way to know what causes that, but it’s something people are going to ask and I understand why they ask it.”