Cubs southpaw Wade Miley has been shut down for the next 10 days after an MRI revealed inflammation in his throwing elbow. There isn’t a known timetable for Miley’s return, but the shutdown period does mean that Miley will begin the season on the injured list. This could delay Miley’s season debut until late April or even early May, but Cubs manager David Ross told reporters (including The Chicago Tribune’s Meghan Montemurro) that Miley’s injury isn’t seen as a major concern.
Miley’s absence creates at least a temporary hole in Chicago’s rotation. Miley was projected as the third starter behind Marcus Stroman and Kyle Hendricks, with Drew Smyly (another offseason veteran acquisition) now looking to be moved up a slot in the starting five. Alec Mills, Justin Steele, and Keegan Thompson are the top candidates for the final two rotation spots, though with such options as youngers Brailyn Marquez, Anderson Espinoza and Cory Abbott, and non-roster veterans like Steven Brault and Adrian Sampson, the Cubs have a lot of options on hand, if also many question marks.
Miley was one of the first players to change teams this offseason, when the Reds surprisingly placed him on waivers rather than just pay the $1MM buyout of Miley’s $10MM club option for 2022. The Cubs jumped to claim Miley and then exercise that option, thus giving Chicago some much-needed veteran rotation depth at the expense of a cost-cutting division rival.
As he enters his age-35 season, Miley has been a pretty durable pitcher for much of his career, though he tossed only 14 1/3 innings during the abbreviated 2020 season due to groin and shoulder problems. Miley rebounded with a solid effort in 2021, posting a 3.37 ERA and 49.4% grounder rate over 163 innings for Cincinnati and relying on soft contact and above-average control to counteract his lack of strikeouts or fastball velocity.
Another newly-acquired Cub might also be starting his Wrigleyville tenure on the IL, as Montemurro tweets that shortstop Andrelton Simmons is still working through some right shoulder soreness. Simmons has been throwing, but getting fully ready by Opening Day may not be feasible, since the veteran has played in only one Spring Training game.
“Reds won the Miley waiver”
Miley won’t even miss a start because the Cubs can go with four starters until he’s eligible to come off the IL.
Miles going to miss a start. In fact, he’s going to miss at least a couple starts. That said, it’s not like the Cubs are really trying to win anyway so what does it matter?
If I was the Cubs, let’s just hold our breath for the next couple of weeks after we Waded in on this signing
You can do better than that, Curly.
Yes, we don’t always put our best foot forward.
“Get Off My Mound” is somewhat an ambiguous tag, can you expand on that?
Steele is already in the rotation, give Keegan a shot as Miley’s replacement
really? idve figured Thompson had the edge over Steele. The question is, do both have the edge over Mills?
As always, we await developments.
The Cubs rotation looks to be very average at best. Personally I’d go for the home grown guys over someone like Mills, who is just not very good at throwing a baseball.
Could end up being that the Reds knew more about Wade Miley’ elbow as the reason for not picking up his 10MM option.
Or it could be that they got a lucky bit of fortune that makes them look not quite as bad and they still had to deal with all the bad PR following the deal.
Go look at Mileys September stats last year…
Miley’s September ERA throughout his career is over a run higher than any other month. 5.66 to be exact. last month was nothing new.
It was was 8.35 last year…..3 runs higher than his average is nothing new? Got it..
a few starts is a fairly small sample size. 50 is not.
is Espinoza really an “option”?
Probably a good time to go grab Cueto or another semi-dependable veteran arm. Having one rotation spot that’s a revolving door of garbage is one thing, but having 2-3 rotation spots like that when you’re a big market team – albeit a rebuilding team, just isn’t fair to the fan base. At least make it somewhat tolerable to watch.
High scoring games can be fun to watch.
The Cubs offense is in worse shape than their pitching.. so I guess their opponent has a good shot of high scoring. Haha
Still so weird that they signed Stroman
Pretty much the same thing they did with Edwin Jackson a decade ago. Sign a veteran innings eater to take some of the load off the bullpen.
Why is it weird? You have to start adding when you can. They should have gone farther to get Jon Gray also.
But if they did go and get Gray, Ricketts wouldn’t have been able to spend as much on his buying up the Wrigleyville neighborhood.
Think a low velocity Cueto gets lit up for the long ball in Chicago. Adrian Sampson same.
Will be an 81-81 team thanks to Reds and Pirates in same division along with Suzuki motoring….
Wrigley is a pitchers park until June.
71-91
Damn the Reds were just playing 3D chess
Seems like starting pitchers are starting to go down at a scary rate. Short Spring training may be a factor. Hope the trend ends. Cueto’s value goes up every day.
Cubs getting a top 5 draft pick next year .
David Ross if he was smart enough should hold back his diagnosis on Miley’ elbow injury. Numerous elbow injuries end up needing TJ surgery.
Cubs with Miley. Their pitching staff came in like a wrecking ball
As long as he’s healthy at the trade deadline, I’m sure Hoyer and Hawkins are OK with it.
Over/under 75 wins –
This could explain why the Reds waived Miley instead of trading him, which would have required a physical exam. Three of his four Sept. starts were god-awful outings: total of 11.1 IP, 31 H, 16 ER, 5 SO, 4 BB, 6 HR, and an average Game Score of 19. His only good Sept. outing was against the Cubs when he went 7 innings allowing only 1 R on 5 H, 8 K and no BB. Miley also benefitted from huge run support. The Reds scored 10 or more runs in 7 of his 28 starts and outscored opponents 171-111 for the season.
Isn’t it 15 day IL now for pitchers?
So much negativity on here. Don’t you people have anything better to do, than be miserable?