Cubs Injury Notes: Heuer Update, Hoerner, Mills, Alzolay, Madrigal

Over the weekend, we learned that Codi Heuer‘s arm injury, which led to Tommy John surgery during the lockout, was more significant than your run-of-the-mill UCL tear. Unfortunately, the UCL was torn off the bone, which requires a more extensive surgical procedure to repair and, double unfortunately, a much longer rehab period.

So, although Heuer’s timeline under a typical Tommy John surgery could’ve had him back in time for a normal Spring Training next year, his version of the surgery will actually have him out until midseason next year. Heuer, 26 in July, is already eligible for arbitration after this season.

If you want to play conspiracy theorist, you could note that Heuer wasn’t feeling right late last year (he thought he was pitching through a bone bruise, and he was still getting good results despite a dip in velocity), and you could wonder what exactly the White Sox knew when they included him in the Craig Kimbrel trade. In any case, now it’s just a matter of rooting for a full recovery over the next 12+ months, and an impact reliever in the second half of 2023 (when it will hopefully really matter for the Cubs).

Other injury notes …

Nico Hoerner (ankle) is running the bases, and the current expectation is that if he continues to progress, he’s not going to need a minor league rehab assignment. Hopefully he hasn’t lost any of the good rhythm that he was developing.

Alec Mills (back, quad) started for Iowa yesterday, and threw 43 pitches in a mostly nondescript outing. It’s gonna be really tricky to figure out how to proceed with Mills, who could be a swing guy at this point, but remember, the bullpen is going down to just eight pitchers next week. I’m not sure Mills is among the Cubs’ eight best options currently (to say nothing of other guys coming back from injuries), but you also don’t want to lose him from the organization for nothing (he has no minor league options remaining).

The Cubs hope to know soon whether Adbert Alzolay (lat) can throw off the mound by the end of this month. Because this was the second time he’s had that same injury, and because the first time cost him half a season, there was never any expectation that he’d be back before, say, July. That said, if he’s not starting to throw off the mound by early June, even an August return timeline could get a little dodgy.

Things are going slowly with Nick Madrigal‘s back injury, seemingly much slower than anyone expected. It’s definitely to the point where a rehab stint is going to be required, and maybe a long one. “He’s taken that two steps forward, one step back,” David Ross said of Madrigal’s recovery, per The Athletic. “Just trying to introduce him back into activities has gone a little bit slower than we expected, but I think it’s starting to come around now. We’re moving in the right direction, but he’ll definitely need to go off and get some at-bats.”

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Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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