The Chicago Cubs completed their sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday afternoon, but it came at a cost.
First baseman Anthony Rizzo went down with an ankle sprain, joining Javier Baez and Craig Kimbrel on the list of Cubs stars on the shelf heading into the final weeks of the season. While Baez will miss the final 13 games of the year due to a hairline in his thumb, Kimbrel is making progress.
Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told Jordan Bastian of MLB.com that there were no setbacks during Kimbrel's bullpen session on Sunday, and the team is optimistic he can return before the conclusion of the regular season:
“It was good,” Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said prior to Sunday's game against the Pirates. “In terms of him and intensity, as he's progressing, it's just gotten better over the last five or six days. So I think he's on par with what we were expecting for today, in terms of velocity and spin and all the stuff we expect in a normal bullpen. We'll just see how he recovers.”
The next step for the 31-year-old Kimbrel is seeing how he feels when he reports to Wrigley Field on Monday, when the Cubs open a three-game series against the Reds. Chicago will monitor his progress in workouts and playing catch before lining up another mound session. Hottovy said that would likely be a simulated setting against hitters by the middle of next week.
“Hopefully everything progresses the way we want to in the next day or so,” Hottovy said, “and we'll kind of reassess and try to get something going.”
Kimbrel's numbers look ugly (5.68 ERA and 5.2 BB/9 ratio in 19 innings of work), but he has been the impact arm at the end of the bullpen the Cubs so desperately missed for the first three months of the season.
Chicago will hope Kimbrel can come back and contribute as it continues to chase the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central.
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