What's the best route to replace Palencia?
Eric Samulski explains everything you need to know about Daniel Palencia's injury and how you can make up for his absence in your fantasy baseball lineups.
Video Transcript
It's another injury for Cubs closer Daniel Palencia, who was placed on the 15-day IL on Tuesday with elbow inflammation.
Palencia had missed time earlier in the season and come back to the Cubs in May.
and after this one, Cubs manager Craig Counsell said that Palencia told him that his elbow didn't feel great after his last outing, but he had had four days off.
he pitched on Monday, came out of the game not feeling particularly well.
He had convinced manager Craig Counsell to keep him in the game and struck out the side, but he wound up on the injured list the next day.
So we should expect, Palencia to at least miss a few weeks here.
We need to wait and see, exactly how the MRIs come back and all the imaging before realizing exactly how long he is going to be sidelined.
Palencia also hadn't had a save since May 14th, as the Cubs have been in a little bit of a struggle.
And so you're not replacing tons of recent production on your team, but obviously you're gonna look to fill that spot.
I don't know that the answer comes from the Cubs bullpen.
over the last month, Ryan Rolison has been the best pitcher in the Cubs bullpen in terms of win probability added, but he's not getting high leverage innings.
in fact, the highest leverage innings are going to, Caleb Thielbar and Jacob Webb, who have the highest game leverage index over the last month.
That includes Palencia.
And so you could be looking at a situation where Jacob Webb and Caleb Thielbar play matchups, since Thielbar is a left-handed pitcher and Webb is a righty.
But that's not a situation I really would like to be chasing.
I think that there may be ancillary options on other teams who provide you more fantasy value than trying to deal with this chaotic closer-by-committee mess in the Cubs.
