If back-to-back losses with a chance to clinch a playoff spot weren’t frustrating enough for the Cubs, here’s a new potential complication at the very end of the regular season.
Kevin Gausman – the righty pitcher who headlined Jed Hoyer’s trade-deadline haul and figured to be a candidate to log significant playoff innings after helping the Blue Jays to the World Series last season – banged his left shoulder while making a diving play at third base in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to the Marlins. He exited the game with the trainer.
Is it a big deal? Something that could possibly impact his effectiveness or availability come the start of the postseason, just a few days away?
The best Gausman and the Cubs had Wednesday night after the game was that they’ll wait and see.
“I dislocated this shoulder in high school, a long time ago. I didn’t necessarily do the exact same thing, but I just kind of banged it good,” Gausman said. “I felt fine until I stood up to check the other runner, and it felt like the left shoulder was pretty weak at that point.
“It still feels pretty weak, but we’ll see how it feels tomorrow and get some treatment. Hopefully, it’s just a couple-day thing.
“I hope I wake up and feel great tomorrow. But you never know. I’ll get on some medicine and get some treatment, try to get in front of it tonight. It’s just a wait-and-see type thing.”
Though they hope it’s nothing serious, the Cubs can’t afford another pitching headache at the moment, not with nasty weather in Boston jumbling up their final series of the regular season against the Red Sox this weekend. Those games – two of which will now be played in a Friday doubleheader – will be meaningful, with the NL wild-card standings bunched up and home-field advantage in the opening-round, best-of-three series up for grabs.
It’ll be challenging enough for the Cubs to get through the weekend, with its scheduling chaos, and set up their playoff rotation the way they want to. Anything limiting Gausman would make matters that much more complicated.
But the Cubs have to get to the playoffs first, still not something that seems unlikely; they’d have to lose all of their final four games, with the Diamondbacks winning their last four, to completely collapse and miss the postseason altogether.
That has been what’s happened in the first two games of the regular season’s final week, though, with the Cubs dropping each of the first two contests in a home series with the sub-.500 Marlins, an opponent that seemingly offered an opportunity to punch their playoff ticket, certainly when compared to this weekend’s foe, the playoff-bound Red Sox.
But the offense has gone as cold as the Wrigley Field conditions at a bad time, with the Cubs following up Tuesday’s 1-for-18 showing with runners in scoring position by going 1-for-8 in such situations Wednesday, Dansby Swanson’s broken-bat two-run single only briefly getting the Cubs out of trailing position before a video-reviewed double-play ball was flipped into an RBI ground out that gave the Marlins the lead for good in the next inning.
“It always seems like the baseball gods are going to test you, and it always seems to come at a time when you don’t want it to,” Gausman said. “But those are the things that are going to happen at this time of the year. It’s how you bounce back when those things do happen, when you get punched in the face.
“This group, since I’ve been here, has been resilient, and they were a lot before I was here. You can bank on those guys being ready to go.”