Nico Hoerner watched the ball rocket down the third-base line, ricochet off the wall and carom into left field with one thought on his mind.
Score.
As Hoerner went from first to third base in the bottom of the fifth inning of the Chicago Cubs’ 3-1 loss Monday to the St. Louis Cardinals, he felt a grabbing sensation in his left hamstring midway around second, forcing him to pull up into third. He immediately exited the game but received encouraging news Tuesday.
An MRI on Tuesday morning showed a mild strain. He remains day to day, though it wouldn’t be a surprise if Hoerner gets a second consecutive day off Wednesday before Thursday’s day off for the team ahead of a nine-game trip.
If his hamstring doesn’t respond as the Cubs hope by Thursday, they could put him on the injured list and backdate the stint to Tuesday.
“Obviously my legs are part of my game on both sides of the ball, and health there is important,” Hoerner said. “I wasn’t carrying any nagging issues going into that game. We’ve had a longer stretch of playing in a row and a longer game on Sunday, but I recovered well, feeling good.
“So I can’t control everything, unfortunately, in this game, and things are going to show up sometimes.”
The Cubs’ second base depth with Nick Madrigal and Christopher Morel lessens any pressure Hoerner feels for a quick return to the lineup. Madrigal batted leadoff in place of Hoerner and played third base Tuesday versus the Cardinals while Morel started at second.
Hoerner knew it was the right move to come out of the game and not try to play through it. He missed six weeks in 2021 because of a left hamstring strain.
“I don’t think anybody had serious red flags yesterday and was excited about that, but confirming that this morning was nice,” manager David Ross said Tuesday. “This is something that we feel like is not an IL thing, he can deal with and manage.”
Hoerner sounded more irritated that his hamstring issue cost him a chance to give the Cubs the lead on the sequence than at the ailment itself.
“I was frustrated not to score on the play — I was expecting to,” he said. “I felt a specific tightness between second and third that definitely made me realize I was not going to score on the play and pulled up into third.
“I’ve had injuries before and it did not feel like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m injured,’ type of thing. Obviously any discomfort that you feel on the field isn’t the best, but I’m really happy with how we’ve treated it so far and how I’m recovering.”
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