The Cubs' Wild Card Spot Is Safe. Their October Pitching Depth Might Not Be.
Three Cubs landed on the injured list in five days, including two pitchers who matter to the club's October depth. The standings say this is fine. The transaction log says otherwise.
Written by Check the standings and the Chicago Cubs look comfortable. Seventy four wins, a four game cushion in the National League Wild Card race, nothing that looks like an emergency. Check the transaction wire from the same stretch and a different story shows up: three players landed on the injured list in five days, two of them pitchers, and the team went 2 and 3 immediately after, including three straight losses to close the week.
What actually happened
On August 17, the Cubs placed shortstop Dansby Swanson on the ten day injured list with a left oblique strain. The same day, right hander Edward Cabrera went back on the fifteen day list, a right middle finger blister, days after being activated from a separate injured list stint. Two days later, reliever Phil Maton was transferred from the fifteen day list to the sixty day list, a right knee tendinitis that had already kept him out and now keeps him out significantly longer.
A fourth name complicates the picture rather than adding to it. Reliever Daniel Palencia went on a rehab assignment August 16, was formally placed on the sixty day injured list August 17 for right elbow inflammation, then was activated again August 21, four days later. A sixty day designation reversed inside a week is usually a roster mechanics move, freeing a 40 man spot rather than signaling a serious new injury. Counting Palencia as an ongoing loss would overstate the case. He's back.
The part the standings don't show
Since Swanson and Cabrera went down on August 17, the Cubs have gone 2 and 3, winning their first two against a rebuilding Chicago White Sox team before dropping three in a row to close the week, including back to back losses to the Seattle Mariners immediately after the Maton transfer. None of that shows up in a Wild Card gap that's still a healthy four games, because the whole division is currently absorbing a Milwaukee team running away with it at 81-49. A comfortable Wild Card position and a real short-term decline in performance are both true right now.
The counter-case
The front office didn't sit on any of this. Owen Miller was selected onto the active roster the same day Swanson and Cabrera went down, filling the immediate gap. When Miller's own spot needed clearing four days later, Chicago claimed third baseman Gabriel Arias off waivers from the New York Mets and activated him within 48 hours. Palencia's fast turnaround is itself evidence the elbow issue wasn't severe. Read the same transaction list a different way and it shows a system with real answers on the 40 man roster, not a team quietly falling apart. An eight game sample easily contains a normal cold stretch that has nothing to do with who's on the injured list.