Pedro Strop

TODAY: With an MRI revealing a moderate hamstring strain, Strop won’t return in the regular season, MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat was among those to report on Twitter. His postseason availability remains to be seen.

YESTERDAY: Cubs reliever Pedro Strop pulled up lame after grounding into a double play late in tonight’s contest. He says he expects to miss at least a couple of weeks, as Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune tweets, further depleting the late-inning ranks of the Chicago pen at a critical juncture.

Strop was only up to the plate because the heavily worked relief unit was left without other desirable options. Despite a bases-loaded, one-out opportunity, the Cubs sent the veteran hurler up in anticipation of asking him to throw a second inning to lock up a win.

As it turned out, the club won, but Strop was unable to make it back onto the hill. He and skipper Joe Maddon confirmed after the game that it’s a hamstring issue. Understandably, full details of the injury remain unknown at this time.

In large part, Strop’s recovery timeline will simply depend upon how quickly he responds. Perhaps, though, we can expect further indication as to expectations once he’s examined fully in the coming days.

The news leaves the Cubs without their first and second choices in the closer’s role. Top reliever Brandon Morrow is already on the shelf and facing an uncertain path back to the MLB roster. In his stead, Strop has increasingly operated in the ninth inning. Over twenty appearances since the return from the All-Star break, Strop has recorded 11 saves.

At this point, there’s not much to be done but to hope for the best with regard to both righties. Significant outside acquisitions, after all, aren’t a realistic possibility. (Though trades are still possible, through the revocable waiver process, any players changing hands at this juncture are not eligible to participate in the postseason.)

As with Morrow, the 33-year-old Strop is a key piece even before factoring in any added value in a closing capacity. Through 58 frames this year, Strop owns a 2.33 ERA — his fifth-straight season of sub-3.00 ERA pitching in Chicago. After all, going to the next man up still means reducing the quality of the options in the earlier innings, which could lead to increased demands on what’s already a less-than-dominant rotation.

Even if Strop is able to recover by the start of the postseason, any intervening absence will certainly impact the club’s efforts to hold off the Brewers and Cardinals in the division. That makes for an increased challenge for Maddon and his charges, though it might also lead to an even more interesting race for fans of these three teams.

Cubs setup man Pedro Strop has suffered  a setback in his rehab from a torn meniscus in his left knee, as Bruce Levine of 670 The Score/CBS Chicago writes. Strop suffered a groin strain while rehabbing the knee and, rather than going out on a minor league rehab assignment in the near future as had been planned, will now be pushed back until the third week of September. The Cubs still expect Strop to return before season’s end and to pitch in the playoffs, but his delay could continue to put a tax on some of the Cubs’ current late-inning arms. Levine notes that manager Joe Maddon used Aroldis Chapman three straight days, culminating in a 31-pitch outing on Wednesday this week and prompting young Carl Edwards to get a save opportunity (which he converted) in Thursday’s contest. There’s better news on John Lackey and Hector Rondon, with the former expected to come off the DL to make a start on Sunday and the latter expected to return to the relief corps early next week.

More on the NL Central leaders…

• Jake Arrieta has looked downright mortal in 70 innings since late June, logging a 4.37 ERA with some middling rate stats (6.9 K/9, 3.9 BB/9, 1.3 HR/9), and Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan dives into the right-hander’s recent struggles. Notably, Sullivan points out that Arrieta’s slider has become less effective, and the result is that left-handed hitters have begun to have a considerably easier time with him at the plate. Arrieta’s overall number of strikes to lefties has plummeted, while opposite-handed batters have seen a significant uptick in hard contact, exit velocity and launch angle against the 2015 Cy Young winner. Sullivan examines some minor distinctions between Arrieta’s 2015 delivery and his delivery in his recent starts, noting that the Chicago ace is dropping his back leg earlier in his delivery than during his dominant run and over-rotating his upper half. It’s not a definitive cause of Arrieta’s struggles, of course, but Sullivan’s entire analysis is well worth a look for Cubs fans that have been befuddled by Arrieta’s recent decline.
• ESPN Chicago’s Jesse Rogers writes that while many fans have wondered why the Cubs haven’t moved on from hitters Tommy La Stella, Chris Coghlan and Miguel Montero — in La Stella’s case, due to his stepping away from the team for a time following a demotion and in the others’ case simply due to their offensive struggles — each of the three could play an important role in September and October. With so many impact right-handed relievers on the teams they’ll face down the stretch and in the playoffs, each presents Maddon with a potential late-inning matchup. Moreover, the Cubs won’t need a 12- or 13-man pitching staff for a best-of-five series and could choose to carry an extra position player off the bench — and La Stella or Coghlan could fill that role. Montero may still be the odd man out in that scenario, Rogers notes, as the club could elect to carry a more speed-oriented player such as Albert Almora in his stead.