What we’re hearing about the Cubs: Pete Crow-Armstrong, Sammy Sosa, Jaxon Wiggins and more

Pete Crow-Armstrong gave a thumbs-up while walking through the Wrigley Field clubhouse Sunday morning, signaling that he wasn’t worried about his right knee. The Cubs, though, are treating their all-star center fielder with caution, and it’s becoming clear that his condition is not the club’s only issue.

With three weeks to go until the end of the regular season, the Cubs are still solidly positioned to earn the National League’s top wild-card spot. But after keeping Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker out of Sunday’s lineup, Chicago then watched closer Daniel Palencia blow the save in a 6-3 loss to the Washington Nationals. Palencia did not record an out in the ninth inning and walked off the mound with a right shoulder injury that will likely force the Cubs to reevaluate their entire late-game strategy.

Having a short memory is a job requirement for a closer. But even before this setback, Palencia looked like he might need one of those resets that Cubs manager Craig Counsell has been implementing. Palencia, a breakthrough performer with a 100 mph fastball, has been scored upon in seven of his last 13 appearances, which is not a good trend line while building toward October, when bullpens become even more prominent.

The Cubs still have to get there, and Crow-Armstrong fouling a ball off his kneecap made him exit Saturday’s game in pain.

“PCA came in actually feeling pretty good,” Counsell said before Sunday’s loss. “He’s still a little sore today, but we’re going to get him moving around today, which is a good sign. We’ll see how that feels.”

The Cubs also have not necessarily ruled out the idea of placing Tucker on the 10-day injured list as a way to completely resolve his left calf issue before the playoffs. But the expanded roster in September already gave the Cubs an extra position player, and Tucker spent part of his Sunday routine doing agility drills on the outfield grass.

As the projected No. 1 free agent on the board this offseason, Tucker’s health and performance are potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And for a player with a low-key personality, the last several weeks have been noisy.

After hearing the boos and watching Tucker’s body language in August, Counsell decided to bench the all-star outfielder for three games. Not surprisingly, the break worked for one of the best hitters in the game, someone who was due for an uptick in production.

There was also the recent disclosure that Tucker was diagnosed with a hairline fracture in his right hand back in June, which turned out to be his best month as a Cub. By that point, the healing process was underway, and Tucker considered it to be a playable condition. It’s impossible to know if that impacted his hitting mechanics and gradually started that spiral.

The Cubs understood that Tucker would likely be a rental player when they acquired him from the Houston Astros last off-season in a blockbuster win-now trade. The possibility of spending only one year in Chicago makes his availability for the biggest games even more pressing.

“You make injury decisions every single day,” Counsell said. “From Kyle’s end, are we going to try to be on the cautious side of it? Yeah, we’re going to try to be on the cautious side of it. But when he’s ready to play, he’s ready to play. And then he’ll go out there and play.

“Players probably have a pretty good idea of how they feel, too. You have to trust that. That’s part of this. That’s part of taking in all the information. So we’re just taking in all the information, and then we’ll see where that gets us.”

• Behind the scenes, Sammy Sosa has mended his relationship with the Cubs to the point where he was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame. After a 21-year absence from Wrigley Field that ended earlier this summer, the weekend ceremonies seemed to signal the conclusion to an awkward, ongoing saga.

While this still appears to be a feeling-out period between Sosa and the Cubs — the organization has almost completely turned over since his last game at the Friendly Confines in 2004 — it opens the possibility for “Slammin’ Sammy” to throw out the first pitch before a playoff game or lead the seventh-inning stretch in October.

“I’m in the house now,” Sosa said, “so definitely I will be available for every opportunity.”

Sosa did not build this iconic ballpark, but his popularity helped turn it into an enormous moneymaking machine, a wildly popular tourist destination and the vehicle for Wrigleyville’s redevelopment.

Sosa’s exile ended last December, when he released an open letter that Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts required before welcoming him back into the fold. During the Cubs Convention in 2018, Ricketts had referenced baseball’s “Steroid Era” and his belief that “players from that era owe us a little bit of honesty.”

“There were times I did whatever I could to recover from injuries in an effort to keep my strength up to perform over 162 games,” Sosa’s statement read in part. “I never broke any laws, but in hindsight, I made mistakes and I apologize.”

It wasn’t a Cooperstown production, but Sosa and Derrek Lee received their blue jackets and posed in front of their new plaques. Sosa also appeared at this year’s Cubs Convention and spent time around the team during spring training in Arizona. His presence should no longer feel out of the ordinary.

“Let’s see what the future brings,” Sosa said. “I think it’s going to bring great things. I don’t want to go ahead and say something that I’m not supposed to. But I believe that I’m here now, you know? I’m happy just to contribute.”

• While Cubs executives Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins wound up clinging to the organization’s top prospects at the trade deadline, Jaxon Wiggins still became a buzzy name in the baseball industry. Wiggins, a 6-foot-6 right-hander, moved from Double-A Knoxville to Triple-A Iowa last week, a decision with enough momentum behind it that Counsell actually watched his Saturday night debut with the Iowa Cubs.

“On the radar?” Counsell said. “Yeah.”

Remember, the Cubs once kicked around the idea of promoting Cade Horton from Double-A to the majors near the end of the 2023 season, wondering if his raw stuff could immediately work out of the bullpen. Ultimately, too much inexperience worked against Horton, who’s since developed into a frontline starter and a leading candidate in the NL Rookie of the Year race.

The Cubs drafted Wiggins, who turns 24 next month, in the second round in 2023 out of the University of Arkansas. He began this season at Class-A South Bend, and the Cubs will continue to monitor his workload carefully.

For a manager who is constantly thinking about “out-getters” and “the innings puzzle,” Wiggins looms as an intriguing option, either for depth or maybe even October impact.

“There’s a ways to go before we get there,” Counsell said. “But we thought about the challenge of Triple-A for the last three weeks of the season. And then who knows what could happen?”

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