PHOENIX — Cubs right-hander Marcus Stroman sent out a series of texts this week to Cubs coaches and medical personnel with the same message: He was ready to compete.
The Cubs activated Stroman off the 15-day injured list on Friday, adding the veteran starter to the bullpen. To make room for him on the roster, the Cubs optioned rookie Daniel Palencia to Triple-A Iowa.
“It feels great,” Stroman said of rejoining the team after a month and a half on the injured list, first with a hip injury and then a fracture in his rib cartilage. “I did a lot of work to get here, but I’m feeling really good, and just glad to be back and contribute however I can.”
On Friday, Stroman relieved Justin Steele in the seventh inning, tossing two scoreless innings in the Cubs’ 6-4 loss.
Stroman had been ramping up at the Cubs’ spring training complex in Mesa, Arizona for the past couple weeks. He threw the second live batting practice session of his throwing program on Monday, tossing about 45 pitches in three simulated innings.
According to pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, the discussion then turned to whether a minor-league rehab assignment would be the best course of action, or if they’d seen enough in Stroman’s live BPs to bring him back in a shorter role. They went with the latter.
Stroman was insistent Friday: “Oh, I’m ready.”
For Stroman, a feel pitcher, he trusted his body to tell him.
“When you’re out on the mound or in a bullpen, you can feel how your body’s moving in space, you can feel the confidence,” Stroman said. “It clicks when you’re ready.”
The Cubs paired Stroman’s self evaluation with the data they collected. They liked the shapes of his sinker and slider, Hottovy said. And Stroman’s velocity was sitting between 87 and 90 mph, which they were happy with, expecting it would tick up in a game setting. The biomechanical data looked promising.
“And he was recovering,” Hottovy said. “The next day he was like, ‘I feel great.’”
Stroman was diagnosed with the rib cartilage fracture about a month ago. The initial plan, as the team announced it, was for Stroman to wait until he was pain-free to resume baseball activities. He went to his home in Florida to recover.
“Everyone kind of said rest four to six weeks,” Stroman said. “After a week, I just started to get, honestly, a little antsy. So I went and got a cortisone shot.”
That helped the pain. He said the biggest hurdle was healing to the point where he could breathe normally and sleep without the injury bothering him.
“I kept up my arm strength and had been throwing through the process,” Stroman said. “So my arm feels great, my shoulder feels great.”
He kept checking off boxes more quickly than expected: long toss, live BP, returning from the IL.
“If there’s anybody that’s in tune with his body, it’s Stro,” Hottovy said. “He knows exactly how he feels, what he can do, what he can’t do. So you just trust those guys through that process, and then see how much we can push it. He was able to handle a lot of the workload and the bullpens and everything. So my anxiety definitely got eased as we started seeing him go out there and put the work in.”
Stroman hasn’t pitched out of the bullpen since his rookie year, when he made six relief appearances to go along with 20 starts. But he said he’s confident that his stuff will play.
“I want them to be able to use me in whatever role is going to help the team, not necessarily force me into the starting rotation,” Stroman said. “I know I can start, to contribute in that way – I’m going to be a starter for the rest of my career. But in this instance, I don’t want to push anyone out. I want it to blend and mix, and use me to my best ability.”
Manager David Ross didn’t rule out stretching Stroman out to a greater workload over the course of the last couple weeks of the season.
