NEWSLETTER
This weekend, we learned that Seiya Suzuki’s left ring finger isn’t really getting much better, or at least certainly isn’t getting better at the pace anyone had expected or hoped for. David Ross said it “doesn’t look great,” and Jed Hoyer suggested that, while surgery wasn’t necessary, the Cubs would be backing off Suzuki for a while to see if more rest could get things turned in the right direction. It was not a rosy update.
Any chance today’s update offers any reason for optimism?
Well, here’s the latest from David Ross, which maybe sounds a little bit better? Via Cubs.com: “He really wants to play. We tried to take that into consideration. He tried to work out and push it a little bit. [The injury] is still lingering a little bit. He is probably 85-90%. We all came to the conclusion that it’s not smart to have a setback with what we are trying to do. There is no real timetable. We are going to be patient with it.”
So it doesn’t sound like the injury is horrible, but obviously that “no real timetable” thing is what stings.
At least that Cubs.com piece indicates Suzuki didn’t feel much pain this weekend. For his part, Suzuki is definitely itching to go. “I wanted to play,” Suzuki said through team interpreter Toy Matsushita, per Cubs.com. “I spoke with [president of baseball operations] Jed [Hoyer] and Rossy. They were listening to my opinions on how I want to move forward. They had their take on it, as well. So we basically took the middle ground and that is just to rest these next couple of days, and I want to be out there as soon as possible.”
How long will that rest be? Undetermined, though Ross suggested it might be a week, per NBC. But when it’s complete and he’s feeling 100%, Suzuki told NBC that there’s a chance he’ll need a minor league rehab assignment to get up to speed again.
In other words, even if things go more or less perfectly from here, you’re not going to be seeing Suzuki doing baseball activities again until maybe next weekend, and then you wouldn’t realistically see him out on a minor league rehab assignment until, what, the middle of next week? That puts a return to the big leagues near the end of this month, if everything goes well. It’s a bummer.
In the meantime, we are likely to continue to see Jason Heyward draw regular starts in right field. I don’t think anyone has any confidence that, even after Suzuki returns, that Heyward won’t remain a mainstay in the lineup, though, probably out in center field. How the Cubs will coordinate that with Christopher Morel’s playing time (and, by extension, Nick Madrigal’s) remains to be seen.
