SAN DIEGO \u2014 While the Chicago Cubs continue to deal with a cluster of pitching injuries, the anticipated return of Justin Steele, a one-time All-Star, remains increasingly unclear.<\/p>\n
Steele has been diagnosed with a flexor strain in his left elbow, Cubs manager Craig Counsell said Tuesday, following a visit with Dr. Keith Meister in Texas. Last April, Meister handled the season-ending surgery on Steele\u2019s elbow.<\/p>\n
Until recently, the Cubs had been targeting late May or early June for Steele\u2019s return to a rotation that is already missing Cade Horton, who recently underwent season-ending surgery on his right elbow. Steele will be reevaluated in another month, though the club won\u2019t be counting on him until sometime after the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to get less of him this year,\u201d Counsell said, \u201cbut still plenty of time to get back for this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steele, now 30, previously underwent Tommy John surgery while he was a young prospect in Chicago\u2019s farm system. He gradually developed into a frontline starting pitcher, finishing fifth in the National League\u2019s 2023 Cy Young Award voting.<\/p>\n
Steele last pitched in the majors on April 7, 2025, and the Cubs don\u2019t know when he will do so again. He felt some discomfort over the weekend after a bullpen session.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Justin, it\u2019s just frustrating,\u201d Counsell said. \u201cDuring the course of these rehabs, there are always good days and bad days that you navigate through. But when you start getting back to where Justin was \u2014 and getting fairly close to getting back into competition \u2014 you think you\u2019ve kind of crossed some of those (checkpoints). Unfortunately, we\u2019ve just hit another speed bump here, and it\u2019s going to take longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issues with Chicago\u2019s pitching staff were not as noticeable during the club\u2019s 10-game winning streak that ended during this West Coast trip. The Cubs then allowed 27 runs combined in three consecutive losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n
Heading into Tuesday night\u2019s game at Petco Park, in addition to Steele and Horton, the Cubs had eight other pitchers on their 40-man roster who are currently on the injured list:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Hunter Harvey (right triceps inflammation)
\u2022 Porter Hodge (season-ending elbow surgery)
\u2022 Riley Martin (flexor strain in his left elbow)
\u2022 Shelby Miller (recovering from Tommy John surgery)
\u2022 Daniel Palencia (lat strain)
\u2022 Ethan Roberts (right middle finger laceration)
\u2022 Caleb Thielbar (left hamstring strain)
\u2022 Jordan Wicks (left forearm inflammation)<\/p>\n
Although active now, Opening Day starter Matthew Boyd (left biceps strain) and reliever Phil Maton (right knee tendinitis) spent time on the injured list in April. The organization\u2019s top pitching prospect, Jaxon Wiggins, is on Triple-A Iowa\u2019s injured list.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have a lot of injuries, of course, we try to examine everything we\u2019re doing,\u201d Counsell said. \u201cI think that you should. When you\u2019re having success, struggles, the same injury, yeah, absolutely you try to make sure your processes are good and you\u2019re not doing anything that would \u2014 I don\u2019t want to say create injuries \u2014 but make players more exposed to injuries. I don\u2019t have an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2014 While the Chicago Cubs continue to deal with a cluster of pitching injuries, the anticipated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,508,462,82],"class_list":["post-635739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}