For a second day, Cole Hamels threw from flat ground as he recovers from a mild oblique strain suffered before the break.
Although it was flat ground, I do like the sound of “really unleashed”:
Alec Mills will start for the Cubs on Tuesday. Hamels threw from flat ground again today, 105'. Apparently really unleashed. He'll throw again from flat ground possibly Monday and then a side session soon after that assuming all goes well.
— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) July 13, 2019
If Hamels can throw off the mound by, say, Wednesday, it’s not impossible to see him being competition-ready a week after that. If that’s a minor league rehab outing, it would take place sometime in that last week and a half of July, and it’s possible he could be back with the big league team by the end of this month.
Thanks to off-days, if the Cubs wanted to just go with their front four starters after Alec Mills fills in on Tuesday, they would need only one more fill-in start the rest of the month. Hamels, at that point, would’ve missed only three starts despite missing a month of the season.