The Chicago Cubs' bullpen has not performed well this season, and it recently lost one of its top arms to the injured list.
Chicago placed right-handed relief pitcher Porter Hodge on the 15-day IL on Tuesday with a sore left oblique muscle. However, the Marquee Sports Network's Scott Bair reports the 24-year-old threw a bullpen session the next day.
Bair also reported that Hodge first felt the discomfort in his oblique last Friday, but still threw one inning in Saturday's 7-3 win against the Chicago White Sox.
Manager Craig Counsell spoke with reporters, including Bair, before Wednesday's game against the Miami Marlins about Hodge's injury and how the move was more of a precaution.
“Not a complete shutdown,” Counsell told Bair about Hodge's timeline. “We’re going to keep his arm moving, just with a lower intensity, and hopefully by the weekend we can ramp this back up. I think his date to come off would be a week from Tuesday, so we’ll just go from there. (The left oblique) is getting better.”
Before Hodge went on the injured list, he threw 19.1 innings in 21 appearances and struck out 8.8 batters per nine innings. He has a 2.89 ERA in 62.1 MLB innings.
The Cubs have used multiple options at closer this season, with Hodge as one of the candidates who could have taken over the role full-time.
Despite his 5.12 season ERA and 1.50 WHIP, Counsell acknowledged that sending Hodge to the injured list was not the easiest decision to make amid the Cubs' bullpen struggles.
“With pitchers, it’s tough,” Counsell told Bair. “You can try to play seven or eight days without him, but it ends up putting a lot of pressure on the other guys. In hindsight, after last night, you think you should have waited. But you don’t know how the games are going to sequence. You have to be careful with Porter’s health.”
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