Chicago Cubs: Anthony Rizzo’s injury seals team’s fate

In what looks like another wasted season in the championship window, the Chicago Cubs fate was confirmed with Anthony Rizzo’s injury.

For the second consecutive season, the Chicago Cubs are limping toward the finish line. Literally and figuratively.

Already decimated by injuries with Javier Baez out until at least October with a fractured thumb, Craig Kimbrel on the injured list for the second time since being signed by the team in June, and a handful of other nagging injuries that have hampered their season, the team had possibly the worst news of the season on Sunday.

While the box score was definitely encouraging this week, taking all three games against the Pittsburgh Pirates, it was what happened on Sunday when Anthony Rizzo tried to a field a bunt in the top half of the third inning and badly twisted his ankle.

He remained on the ground for quite some time before eventually being helped off by a combination of the team’s trainer and Jason Heyward.

It will likely knock him out for the rest of the season in which the Cubs find themselves just two games back of first place and clinging to a one-game lead in the National League Wild Card spot. With no Rizzo, Baez, or Russell to close out the regular season, it would be extremely difficult to imagine this team doing anything beyond a Wild Card game appearance, assuming they could even get there.

The Cubs, in 2019, have been rather lackluster as a whole with “inconsistent” being the perfect word to describe the play. One week they look like National League contenders and the next, they look like bottom feeders.

Heading into an offseason with a lot of unknowns, the Cubs front office will have to make several key decisions including Joe Maddon’s future, potentially parting with a couple of core players, and fixing a broken offense. This season had a weird vibe to it since the early part of May when Pedro Strop first was injured. The Cubs put together an impressive month of April after a terrible first week of the season.

They started off well in May but not having a true closer proved to be detrimental as the Cubs were second in the league in blown saves at one point. Banking on the return of Brandon Morrow, was a dumb decision on Theo Epstein as he (Morrow) will certainly have his 2020 club option declined.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in the offseason but, right now, it looks like another shoulda-woulda-coulda season. The Cubs need to fix their offense but they may have more questions than answers at the moment.