As we discuss what the Chicago Cubs need to do in their rotation this offseason, we are making one very big assumption: the Cubs will proceed as though they don’t know what they might get from Ben Brown (among others, sigh) next year.
Brown, who broke out in a very big way this season, saw his year end early for the second time in three seasons thanks to a stress reaction in his neck. It’s an injury that has been particularly difficult to diagnose and fully sort out, and although Brown did get back to throwing after being shut down in June, he suffered a setback and never re-took the big league mound. Obviously we all hope that an offseason of rest and recovery will be enough to get him back on track for Spring Training – and then we hope the Cubs can figure out a way to KEEP him healthy – but the latest update doesn’t provide much positive clarity.
From The Athletic:
“Ben Brown, whose season ended in June after a recurring neck injury, is the biggest question mark. He still hasn’t been cleared to throw and surgery hasn’t been ruled out. At minimum, his immediate future is in question.”
To be sure, not throwing in early November, alone, wouldn’t necessarily be a huge concern. Although most guys are throwing year-round at this point, some do take several weeks off in October/November, and don’t really start a throwing program until December/January. But, of course, Ben Brown’s situation is not quite a typical one, and the sooner he’s throwing, the sooner we can have optimism about him successfully being able to ramp up for the season in the spring.
Moreover, the fact that surgery hasn’t yet been ruled out is a notable concern, since that means he’s not yet fully over the hump (again), let alone having fully tested things back out to know if the natural healing process was enough this time around. And since it’ll theoretically take a while to get to that point, and then, if surgery is needed, a recovery and rehab will also take a long time, I don’t know if there’s any way to predict the timeline for Brown’s debut next year, much less how effective he’ll be.
Throw in the added fun wrinkle of the lockout – after which the Cubs will have to cease all communication with Brown, including about his injury/surgery/recovery/whatever – and this is really quite a mess.
At least surgery hasn’t been ruled in yet? Is that the most positive way to read the update, if you’re inclined to be positive?
The part I keep getting hung up on is that there are really two big scary issues here, regardless of anything else we try to talk ourselves into:
1.) The health risk, itself. What if this is a continual nagging issue that Brown can’t ever quite get past? It’s the primary worry with any pitcher injury, especially when you’ve been teased by seeing just how good a guy can be. It’s just quietly waiting there in the background at all times, threatening to derail another season.
2.) What if Brown can get over the injury, but what if the very thing causing the injury – repetitive stress on particular area of his neck – is fundamentally intertwined with the things his body needs to do *in order to be very good in the first place*?
We can hope he will heal. We could even, if we had to, hope that surgery will somehow address the issue so that it never returns. But, even after a successful surgery, given how this has played out over the last couple years, and given the level of uncertainty that STILL seems to be attached to it, I don’t think we can mentally treat this like a typical pitcher injury situation with a timetable for absence, a timetable for rehab, and then a clear path for a return to good performance. I think it’s all just really unknown.
I don’t want that to sound like despair, because I mean the words I’m saying: this is all unknown. It sounds largely unknown to the Cubs and Ben Brown, too. So we just have to follow along with a pocketful of hope.
As for the offseason, what matters here and now is that the Cubs cannot alter their offseason approach on the thinking that they DEFINITELY WILL get 100+ impactful innings from Ben Brown next year (or 100+ impactful innings from Justin Steele, or even 30+ impactful innings from Cade Horton). In a “worst case” scenario, things look like they did last spring, with too many starters – including Brown – for too few rotation spots. And, as we saw last year (and pretty much every year since time immemorial), those things wind up sorting themselves out.
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