Justin Steele encouraged by initial MRI results on elbow, Cubs delay injured list decision

Cubs left-hander Justin Steele estimated he spent an hour in an MRI machine Tuesday morning. But he said he was “happy” with the early results.

“There was no severe damage or anything like that,” Steele said of team orthopedist Dr. Stephen Gryzlo’s initial assessment of the southpaw's sore left elbow. “It was just some inflammation that was kind of expected to be seen.”

The Cubs announced Monday that Steele would not be starting against the Pirates Tuesday as originally planned and right-hander Kyle Hendricks would be filling in. The team is about halfway through the information-gathering process on Steele’s injury, manager Craig Counsell said. The Cubs will seek subsequent opinions.

“Just another read on it, to just be comfortable for both our sake and for Justin's sake,” Counsell said.

Until then, the Cubs won’t have a definitive timeline for Steele’s recovery. But avoiding the injured list is still in play. Steele said he at least expects to pitch again this season.

“He has symptoms,” Counsell said. “So, they're not bad symptoms, but enough to prevent him, obviously, from pitching [Tuesday].”

The Cubs are hopeful Steele will be able to test his elbow with catch play on Wednesday.

“Basically, we're deciding on, how long is it going to take Justin to be able to pitch?” Counsell said. “If we think he can make a start here in five, six days – within a week – then maybe we try to not use the injured list. If it's going to be more than that, then we use the injured list. Even if the injured list is involved here, it doesn't rule him out for the season.”

At this point in the year, even missing one start from one of the Cubs' best pitchers could be a consequential blow.

The Cubs entered Tuesday with a streak of five straight series wins, including back-to-back sweeps in Pittsburgh and Washington. They were 3 ½ games back of the last National League wild-card seat. But with less than four weeks left in the season, they have little room for error.

“I want to make every single start every single year,” Steele said. “But I feel like it was smart just because I’d been feeling it, don't want to continue to blindly throw not knowing exactly what it was. I'd say it was smart just so we could have a definite answer as to what it was.”

Lefty Jordan Wicks’ return Sunday from the 60-day IL (strained right oblique) helped the Cubs navigate this turn in the rotation while continuing to manage pitcher workloads. Wicks threw five innings of one-run ball against the Nationals in his first start back. That pushed Jameson Taillon’s start to Monday, giving him a couple extra days of rest between starts. Hendricks took the mound Tuesday on a six-day rotation.

“We obviously have a deep, deep [pitching] staff around here,” Steele said of a group that’s weathered waves of injuries this year, including Steele’s hamstring strain early in the season. “We've proved it time and time again. So that's obviously a huge help.”

Steele said he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he began feeling tightness in his elbow, only that he’d been managing it. Then when he threw his usual bullpen in between starts in Washington this weekend, both Steele and pitching coach Tommy Hottovy could tell the lefty was “feeling a little something.”

“I've been able to do what I want to do, execute pitches and whatnot,” Steel said. “But it comes to a point where it was like, ‘How long do you want to continue to pitch through something? How bad can it continue to get if you continue to do so?’”

Steele had Tommy John surgery back in 2017. But he compared this injury, both in location and feeling, to the forearm strain that landed him on the 15-day IL for just two weeks last June. At the time, the team characterized the IL move as precautionary.