Ian Happ Headed to Injured List: Why Are Chicago Cubs Calling Up Moises Ballesteros? [UPDATE: Now Wait a Minute.]

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images

Baseball insider Bruce Levine, of 670 The Score, characterized the news as the Cubs having "dodged a bullet". Ian Happ had X-rays on the shin off which he fouled a ball late in the team's latest loss to the Brewers, which pushed them two games back of Milwaukee heading into Wednesday's series finale. Perhaps that's true, in a way, but we should widen the lens to complete the analogy: that one bullet they dodged appears to be just the latest in a hail of them, many of which have riddled the corpus of this team over the last few weeks.

Despite not having a break in his lower leg, Happ will be placed on the 10-day injured list, according to reports that emerged overnight from ESPN's Jesse Rogers and the Marquee Sports Network. To replace him on the active roster, Chicago is calling up designated hitter (and quasi-catcher) Moisés Ballesteros for his second stint with the parent club.

If you're hunting for silver linings, at least Ballesteros will get a chance to prove himself a bit more ready than he was early in the season. If his bat is everything the Cubs believe it is, they shouldn't miss Happ all that much during his time on the shelf. It's fascinating, though, that the team chose to go with Ballesteros, rather than either Owen Caissie or Kevin Alcántara. Caissie is the one with more experience at Triple-A Iowa, and whose bat has been hotter of late. Alcántara is the right-handed batter who could give Pete Crow-Armstrong some time off his feet, which Crow-Armstrong seems to need desperately.

The best apparent explanation for electing to promote Ballesteros has to do with the team's plans at the trade deadline—only you can tell yourself as many different stories as you'd like about what shape that influence might take. Is the team avoiding bringing up Caissie or Alcántara, because they expect to move them? Are they allowing themselves a final, one-game showcase of Ballesteros, in whom some prospective trade partner is interested? Or is this a matter of pure logistics, wherein it made the most sense to bring up the only one of the three who has been in the majors already this year and they could well replace him with an outside acquisition by the weekend?

The answer doesn't matter much, because it will reveal itself almost immediately. The trade deadline is just over 30 hours away. Ballesteros will be with the team for the final game of this road trip to Milwaukee. After that, what happens is anyone's guess.

UPDATE: In a twist that makes sense (but which sure casts the official broadcast partner of the team in a lousy journalistic light), it now appears that the multiple overnight reports that Happ would go on the IL might be mistaken.

 

Bruce Levine is at the park in Milwaukee, and his reporting suggests that ESPN and Marquee both jumped the gun by saying Ballesteros would take Happ's place on the roster. It's possible the team recalled Ballesteros on a just-in-case basis, to join the team's taxi squad, and that wires got crossed for that reason. It's also possible Happ's swelling came down better overnight than he or the team expected. Either way, this is good news—but a bit of a needless false start, fueled by a report from an official and team-sanctioned outlet.

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[Rex Buckingham]

My guess is that Caissie and Alcantara are being discussed in deals more than Mo, and the Cubs may just believe more in Mo's ability to hit at the ML level right now