NEWSLETTER
I’m not going to say we’ve seen this same song and dance before. Not because we haven’t – we have – but because you’re already going to be thinking it before I say it, so I’ll just leave it to the confines of your own mind.
As you noticed, Cody Bellinger is once again not in the lineup after his knee injury-ish-thing on Monday night. Like Nico Hoerner the previous week (same circumstances, chronologically), the Cubs are letting Bellinger sit for this series, and hoping that he’ll be OK after the off-day tomorrow so that an IL stint will not be necessary.
If Bellinger can’t go on Friday, that’s when he’ll be put on the IL, backdated the maximum of three days (so he would thereafter have to miss at least one week).
I hate when this happens, but mostly because it means the Cubs are missing an important player and are playing shorthanded on the bench (if Bellinger can’t actually be available tonight). I understand it, though. You’re likely hoping a guy can play each of the following two days, but you don’t know for sure – that’s how close he is to being OK. So you also don’t want to have someone travel across the country for a possible call-up that you think is highly unlikely to occur. So you wait it out until the maximum back-date, and then you make a more final decision.
One thing the Cubs USED to do all the time was go well past three days before making a decision (there used to not be a three-day maximum on backdating), so they were playing shorthanded for three, four, five, or more days. This isn’t quite that bad.
But, ultimately, this is still not good news. Bellinger’s knee injury maybe wasn’t serious, but it was bad enough that he’s now had to miss at least two and a half games. You don’t really want to see anything derail his season.
