CINCINNATI – Terry Francona knows a resilient team when he sees one. And he sees that in the Chicago Cubs.
Before Friday’s series opener, Cincinnati's manager was asked how impressive it is that the Cubs have been able to overcome numerous injuries to their roster, and all the while post a mark 11 games over .500 heading into Friday’s game.
“They've been very versatile, and that helps a ton,” Francona said. “When you have a guy or two, you can bounce around, it can alleviate. You might not have the best bench, but if you got a guy there that can go play for a week, 10 days, two weeks, it really helps.”
The Cubs have, of course, weathered their fair share of ups and downs, posting a pair of 10-game win streaks and a 10-game skid in May.
But Chicago skipper Craig Counsell agreed with Francona’s assessment of his club’s resilience and versatility.
“Our defense, I think, is definitely a factor, and look, it just helps your pitching,” Counsell said. “We can go to the Baltimore series and the St. Louis series and just see examples of plays and runs taken off the board from our defense. They just make your pitchers better from a pitching perspective.”
The Cubs entered Friday with 15 players on the injured list, including starters Edward Cabrera, Justin Steele and Jameson Taillon.
“It's been a revolving door,” Counsell said. “We've had a lot of new faces, and some people have really stepped up in those opportunities and done a really good job. And I think that's the reason why we're here as well.”
Counsell repeated his message from earlier in the week when he indicated Friday that if everything goes well in a rehab start on Saturday, Taillon will return to the rotation after the All-Star break.
The Cubs are also in a promising Wild Card spot even with free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman struggling to a .238/.336/.342 slash line with just seven homers and 35 RBIs out of the No. 2 hole in the batting order.
“I think Alex is going to have a strong rest of the season,” Counsell said. “I don't know if the All-Star break is going to be the marker for it. I thought he had a pretty strong series in Baltimore, so hopefully that's the start of it. But I think I do think Alex is going to have a really good second half.”
All things considered, taking stock of his team right now, Counsell sounded very encouraged with the way his team has fought through everything in the first three months.
“Look, I think we've got a decent record, right? And I think we put ourselves in a pretty good position,” Counsell added. “That doesn't guarantee us anything going forward, and we're not going to come back from the break and be finished with the injuries. We've still got injury issues, and we've got ways to get what I would consider back… I think every team has some injuries, but get back to kind of medium strength. We're still at a pretty big deficit after the break.”