Sunday wasn’t a good day for Cubs starting pitchers.
In the morning, the team put Edward Cabrera on the 15-day injured list because of the blister on his right middle finger that forced him from his last start Wednesday. In the afternoon, Shota Imanaga had a second consecutive rough outing, allowing seven runs, including three home runs, in six innings in the Cubs’ 8-5 loss to the Astros.
The Cubs’ rotation is already short-staffed, with Matthew Boyd (left knee) on the 15-day IL, Justin Steele (left elbow) shut down and Cade Horton (right forearm) out for the season. In fact, the only good news with the unit was that Boyd’s recovery “is going very well,” according to manager Craig Counsell. But he still has about three weeks to go.
Cabrera still was affected by the blister during a bullpen session Sunday.
“It’s just still there, is the best way to say it,” Counsell said. “The more he stepped on a pitch, the more he felt it. We’re optimistic this could be a minimum or very close to a minimum stint. But we just got to let that hot area cool down, so to speak.”
The Cubs called up Jordan Wicks from Triple-A Iowa, where he had a 4.44 ERA in seven starts, covering 26 ⅓ innings. In his last three outings, though, Wicks allowed one run with 12 strikeouts in 15 innings. Counsell said he’ll be “involved” in the game Tuesday in Pittsburgh, which was Cabrera’s next start.
Imanaga, meanwhile, has allowed 15 earned runs in his last 10 ⅓ innings, including five homers. The big blow Sunday was a three-run homer by Christian Walker, his third homer of the series, in the Astros’ five-run fifth. Imanaga threw his trademark splitter, but he has been struggling with it lately.
“He made a mistake to a dangerous hitter in a spot where [there’s] not a lot of space to pitch around him,” Counsell said. “Three-run homers are tough to overcome.”
“In the beginning, [the splitter] felt good,” Imanaga said, “but in the later innings, it felt like the splitters that were trying to go down below the zone were left up in the zone. The best ones are when it starts in the bottom of the zone and drops to the hitters’ knees. That’s something I need to work on.”
The Cubs have now allowed 73 home runs, the second-most in the majors.
“We’ve got to prevent homers better,” Counsell said. “If you give up the number of homers we’re giving up, that’s a problem.”
So is the health of the starting pitchers whom the Cubs expected to have entering the season.
“Injuries to the pitching side are going to be part of the season,” Counsell said. “We’ve got to withstand that, as we have some other stretches. We’ve got two guys [Boyd and Cabrera] coming back in probably two-ish, three-ish weeks. Certainly, some guys are going to have opportunities in the meantime.”