Cubs right-hander Daniel Palencia has been activated from the 15-day IL, the team announced. The closer missed three weeks with a lat strain. Fellow righty Yacksel Rios was designated for assignment in a corresponding move.
Palencia initially went down with what was labeled a left oblique strain. Additional testing showed a mild lat strain. He’ll return to the big-league club after just one rehab appearance. Palencia tossed 19 pitches for Triple-A Iowa on Friday.
Before the injury, Palencia had fired five scoreless innings as the unquestioned closer for Chicago. The strong relief work had only resulted in one save, though. Since Palencia went down, the Cubs generated six saves, which went to five different relievers. Caleb Thielbar, Ben Brown, Jacob Webb, Corbin Martin, and Hoby Milner all stepped in to close out games.
Brown and Webb recorded two-inning saves in the first two games of this weekend’s series against the Diamondbacks, part of a patchwork approach with Chicago dealing with several reliever injuries. Even with Palencia back, the Cubs still have Hunter Harvey, Riley Martin, Ethan Roberts, and Thielbar on the IL. Porter Hodge was lost for the season.
More to come…
Cubs 4-2 in the Rios era.
The funniest thing about Rios is that in the fall is when the commentators are claiming this guy or another suck as ball players bounce from team to team looking for opportunity old Yacksel Rios will be cashing a playoff check and probably making more money with that than he made from being on the Cubs west coast trip this week. Must be great to suck when you get paid.
I’m not sure how bad players do well enough in Double-A to get promoted.
Cubs offense scoring enough runs these days that the bullpen’s margin for error has some breathing room built into it. Still tho, the bullpen is performing admirably. Ben Brown, especially. He’s on the same trajectory that Assad was on… not performing well as either starter or leverage reliever, sent down occassionally to the minors, eventually returned to the big leagues because of injuries, installed as an innings eater, peformed consistently well in that role, eventually brought in to increasingly higher leverage situations, and after performing well then, too, suddenly one of Counsell’s go-to guys.
When everyone is healthy, Brown, Thielbar and Palencia should be a pretty good end of game bullpen. A decent Maton and Harvey would be gravy.