Chicago Sports

ATLANTA – Cubs pitcher Alec Mills will not make a rehab start this week in Triple-A Iowa as originally planned.

The right-hander experienced right quad tightness while working out, according to the team, so the Cubs are taking a cautious approach to his recovery and shutting him down for a few days. After that point, they will determine next steps.

Mills will not necessarily jump right back into a rehab start and could need a bullpen before returning to game action.

Mills began the season on the injured list with a low back strain. With him and southpaw Wade Miley (left elbow inflammation) working back from injury, Mark Leiter Jr. has filled the hole in the Cubs’ rotation. He made his third start of the season on Wednesday at Truist Park against the Braves

Earlier the same day, Miley threw a simulated game. He logged 46 pitches, including three up-downs, taking steps toward a rehab assignment.

Alzolay not yet throwing

Cubs right-hander Adbert Alzolay (right shoulder strain) has not yet resumed throwing, after receiving a platelet-rich plasma injection in early March. Alzolay entered spring training with the injury and began the season on the 60-day IL.

He remains in the fitness phase of his recovery and doesn’t become eligible to return from the IL until early June.

The Cubs could also bring him back as a multi-inning reliever, as they did late last season, which would require a shorter ramp-up than that of a starter.

Rodriguez receives PRP shot

Hard-throwing Cubs reliever Manuel Rodriguez received a PRP injection with the hope of avoiding surgery. The Iowa Cubs placed him on the minor-league IL two weeks ago with a right elbow strain.

Rodriguez is expected to start a throwing program in the next couple weeks.

But wait, there’s more …

Cubs lefty Brad Wieck (left elbow strain) and infielder David Bote (left shoulder) both become eligible to come off the 60-day IL in early June, but Wieck’s return will likely be in the second half of the season. Bote, on the other hand, is on track for a rehab stint in mid-to-late May.

Lefty Steven Brault, who the Cubs signed to a minor-league deal after his physical revealed a triceps injury, remains more than a couple months away from a return.

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Someone should mail a fruit basket to Ryan Pace in Atlanta.

While Pace left new general manager Ryan Poles a teardown-worthy roster, he also gave him a gift. Pace’s decision to trade up to draft Ohio State’s Justin Fields last year cost the Bears their first-round picks last year and on Thursday, but it yielded something to dream on at quarterback. Fields still needs developing, but he gives the Bears hope.

Waiting until this year to draft a passer would have been a disaster. There will likely be two or three quarterbacks drafted in the first round Thursday, but none — not Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, Liberty’s Malik Willis or Ole Miss’ Matt Corral –are as good as any of the five that went in Round 1 last year.

This year’s class, which also features North Carolina’s Sam Howell and Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder, has the worst high end in a decade, if not a generation. Which is strange, given that the2020 coronavirus college season– which didn’t cost players eligibility– rendered the draft deep at other positions.

“I can’t explain that at all,” Poles said. “I think you get in different cycles and different years, certain strengths and weaknesses.”

Last year, Pro Football Focus had five quarterbacks ranked in its pre-draft top 14–Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence (1), BYU’s Zach Wilson (2), Fields (3), North Dakota State’s Trey Lance (10) and Alabama’s Mac Jones (14)–and three more in their top 84.

This year, Willis is the site’s top-rated quarterback, at No. 30 overall. Three others are in the top 106.

Had the Bears not traded for Fields, they would have picked seventh Thursday. Taking a quarterback there is a reach by every metric.

That might not stop desperate teams from trying, of course. The Panthers, picking sixth, need an upgrade over Sam Darnold, while the Falcons (8) and Seahawks (9) dealt their quarterbacks this offseason. The Saints (16) might want a development project. The Steelers (20) could eye local guy Pickett to challenge Mitch Trubisky. The Lions pick second and 32nd, and could use the latter pick on a passer.

The top of the draft will be dominated by linemen. Michigan edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson could go No. 1 to the Jaguars, though Georgia defensive end Travon Walker, whose NFL Scouting Combine was better than his college tape, may sneak into the top spot. Oregon edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux is as talented as either player, but inconsistent, and could go in the top five.

Alabama’s Evan Neal and N.C. State’s Ikem Ekwonu top a deep offensive tackle class, and Cincinnati cornerback Sauce Gardner and Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton lead all defensive backs.

Six receivers could be drafted in Round 1: Ohio State’s Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave, USC’s Drake London, Alabama’s Jameson Williams, Arkansas’ Treylon Burks and Penn State’s Jahan Dotson.

The Bears will look at receivers when they pick twice in Round 2 and once in Round 3 on Friday. They won’t, however, look for a quarterback. For that, they should be thankful.

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Andrew Vaughn broke a tie with home run in the seventh inning Wednesday afternoon.

Everyone took a deep breath of 39-degree air and exhaled.

The White Sox’ losing streak was over at eight.

Vaughn’s homer, on the first pitch from Royals reliever Scott Barlow, followed two-out singles by Danny Mendick and Tim Anderson and powered the Sox to a 7-3 victory at cold and gray Guaranteed Rate Field, the Sox’ first win in 11 days.

It came after the Royals, handcuffed on no hits through five innings against Dylan Cease, chipped away at a 3-0 deficit with two runs in the sixth without the benefit of a hard-hit ball, and a run in the seventh against Jose Ruiz and Bennett Sousa.

Cease had his best start of the season, striking out nine and allowing two run on three hits and three walks in six innings.

The losing streak was the Sox’ longest since 2018. They lead the majors with 20 errors but played a clean game Wednesday. The Sox hadn’t scored more than four runs since April 13 and were hitting .179/.233/.274 with 22 runs scored in their previous 11 games.

Vaughn also doubled in a run, and third baseman Jake Burger homered, doubled and singled.

Kendall Graveman pitched two scoreless innings of relief to finish it off. The Sox are 7-10.

Luis Robert still out

Center fielder Luis Robert (groin) still had discomfort when moving laterally Tuesday so his return was delayed another day.

“He’s stepping up the workout every day,” La Russa said. “When he can do everything without any discomfort, that’s when he’s greenlighted, as far as I’m concerned.”

Moncada, Kelly headed to Charlotte

Third baseman Yoan Moncada and right-handed reliever Joe Kelly will begin rehab assignments with Triple-A Charlotte Friday.

A switch-hitter, Moncada still feels something slight in his oblique when he swings from the left side but it’s apparently not minor enough for him to test it. Kelly will need at least three appearances before he joins the Sox, La Russa said.

“In YoYo’scase, he’s been swinging really well here, so he may come out there and just [have] 15 at-bats and look like he’s ready,” La Russa said. “But it may take him 25, no way to predict it. It’s always a mistake to bring a guy up to the big leagues before he’s ready. Because he’s going to struggle, and then he’s got to get out of the struggle. It’s better to come in here ready to play.”

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Plus-minus is a flawed statistic — it reflects team performance far more than individual performance, yet is attached to individuals. But many players still care deeply about it.

Seth Jones is one of those players.

And when he looks at his unsightly minus-38 rating this season –the second-worst mark in the NHL and singlehandedly worse than his minus-25 rating from his first eight seasons combined –it bothers him.

“Any time you’re that ‘dash,’ it’s not a good thing,” Jones said Wednesday, using the hockey slang for minus. “I know a lot of guys are ‘dash’ on the team this year; we didn’t score a lot and we had a lot of struggles. But we really can all take better steps to be better defensively.”

Jones has been admirably honest when evaluating himself all year. His first season in Chicago hasn’t been anything like what he surely imagined, and he hasn’t been perfectly consistent either, but he has at least consistently owned up to those struggles and taken accountability for them.

And as the season winds down, Jones’ overall performance really doesn’t look bad at all in retrospect. His five goals, including zero on the power play, weren’t “good enough” –but thanks to 46 assists, his 51 points are still the second-most of his career and tied for 14th among defensemen league-wide.

Digging deeper, his analytics on defensive zone retrievals and exits and offensive zone entries are all fantastic. JFresh Hockey’s player card puts his WAR (wins above replacement) in the 91st percentile. Still, he’s personally not satisfied.

“I had some good moments in the year, and had some not-so-great moments,” he said. “I obviously have put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best player I can be. … [I’ll] watch a lot of video this summer on how I can be better in those areas and be that player that this team needs me to be.”

Interim coach Derek King, asked to assess Jones’ season, also gave a remarkably sincere answer.

“[At the] start of training camp, I was like, ‘Hmm, I don’t know why they signed this guy’ –honestly,” King said. “Just watching him, I was like, ‘Uhhh…’ But he got comfortable in his surroundings…and then he just took off.

“He’s an elite hockey player. He’s a stud. He impressed me a lot. If he were a little more vocal, too, which he’s starting to be, I wouldn’t doubt seeing him wearing a letter — like, a big letter — down the road, if ever an opportunity comes for him. Because he’s a class act.”

With his eight-year contract extension just kicking in this summer, that opportunity does seem likely to eventually come. Jones has said all the right things about wanting to anchor and lead the Hawks through their rebuild.

As soon as this season ends, however, he’ll promptly travel to Finland to play for the U.S. in the world championships.

Then he’ll head back home to Dallas for summer training, of which watching video will indeed be a big part. The Hawks as a team watched more video the second half of the season, which Jones thought helped them, and he wants to start reviewing his own clips more thoroughly — particularly on the power play.

“I don’t think I was aggressive enough [on the power play] the first half of the year, whether it was shooting the puck or acting like I was shooting the puck and moving it to create space for [Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane],” he said. “Because ‘Cat and Kane are so good at finding each other in that seam and making plays down low, and I kind of got caught watching [it] myself, like a lot of penalty kills do.

“When I got the puck the second half, I started shooting it a little bit more, trying to be more aggressive. That’s going to open up more space for them. That’s something I need to focus on.”

His younger brother Caleb will yet again train with him, and Jones predictably lobbied Wednesday for the Hawks to re-sign him, saying this season was “pretty special” together and he’s “looking forward to the future with him.”

Regardless of Caleb’s fate, though, Seth will undoubtedly hope the future brings better times in his Hawks career.

“It’s been very frustrating, obviously, when you’re not winning games,” he said. “Hopefully we can become better out of this…adversity.”

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What’s another minor physical issue when so many are major with the White Sox?

When it’s the closer, a little thing is a little more than that.

“We’re going to be careful with him,” manager Tony La Russa said.

Turns out Liam Hendriks served up that walk-off home run to Byron Buxton in Minnesota Sunday after tweaking his back in the clubhouse, and he hasn’t been available since, not that he was needed during an off day Monday and a 6-0 loss to the Royals Tuesday, the Sox’ eighth defeat in a row.

“Between the ninth and 10th [innings] I don’t know what happened,” Hendriks said Wednesday. “I went to grab a towel and walked slowly on the tile in cleats and just couldn’t stand up right after that. They tried to take me out and I just kept telling them no. Probably in hindsight it probably would have been a good thing. But my stubborn [butt] is going back out there no matter what.”

And pitching to Buxton no matter what, even with first base open.

“Don’t ever put anyone on when I’m on the mound,” Hendriks said.

“He’s got all the talent in the world. But I’ve been able to beat him on pitches in similar locations before in my career [Buxton was 0-for-2 against Hendriks] and I know that I trust my stuff no matter what. I’m never thinking about putting somebody on base or pitching scared, because that’s when you get into trouble.”

Hendriks was able to humbly recognize the bigness of the 469-feet blast but liked his chances knowing Buxton, who struck out three times earlier against Lucas Giolito and homered against Aaron Bummer, is a free swinger. In hindsight, a slider would have been a better option instead of a fastball.

“If I get it into a better location, he doesn’t do that much damage with it,” Hendriks said. “And then I have a chance of facing a guy who I have always had tough at-bats with, with [Luis] Arraez on deck. I’m not trying to put a guy on for a contact guy with the winning run on second base.”

Hendriks’ competitive nature and pushing it for a team that badly needed a win on the last day of a winless road trip ruled the moment, but a lot of his pitches were probably related to a back issue that crops up occasionally but often goes away quickly, he said.

“Still no excuses for what happened in that game,” Hendriks said.

As for the current April swoon, Hendriks agreed with La Russa and hitting coach Frank Menechino that players are putting too much pressure on themselves, wanting to be the guy who saves the day. They stood a good chance of breaking the skid after Dylan Cease opened Wednesday’s game with four perfect innings and was staked to a 3-0 lead.

“Just stay within yourselves,” Hendriks said. “I’m at fault as much as anybody else.

“Its been tough. The results haven’t been great. The injuries have been tough emotionally. It’s something if this happens in the middle of the year, nobody really bats an eye depending on how we’ve done before that. That’s just, it’s unfortunate it’s happening at the start. But I have complete faith in this group. We got a bunch of bench guys on this team who on any other team are starters. That’s a tribute to the talent level in this clubhouse and what we are able to do.

“Right now, it’s just, when it rains it pours. If we get those couple of dink hits that will fall in or make a pitch or a line out here and there, the entire kind of vibe changes. Talked to Jey Hey [Josh Harrison] about it yesterday. We still need to remain that cocky, that arrogant, that confident group because no matter what we know we’ve got the talent in this clubhouse and we can go on a run like more than any other team. We need to make sure we set ourselves up to full take advantage of that rather than self pitying.”

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Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles has been coming up with “creative” ways to get the team more picks in the upcoming 2022 NFL Draft.

Rumors have been circulating the past few weeks the Bears might be trying to trade linebacker Robert Quinn for more picks. Tuesday night, reports came out the Bears were not activley trying to trade Quinn, who broke the Franchises single-season sack record in 2021 with 18.5 takedowns.

Quinn said in an espn article published Tuesday that he wanted to remain in Chicago and didn’t suspect he would be traded, but that the NFL is a “crazy business.” This is good news for Bears fans who’d like to keep the productive defender. He’s a leader on the defense, and Quinn said he belives the team has high expectations for the upcoming year.

However, the Bears could certainly use more draft picks and Quinn should be able to gain a valuable pick from a team in need of a serious pash rush. The 3-time pro bowl athlete will be 32 heading into the 2022 season, and one wonders how many peak seasons the vet has left.

Make sure to check out our Bears forum for the latest on the team.

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As Ryan Poles heads into his first draft as Bears general manager on Thursday, he’s thinking big — not big as in making a splash this week, but big picture. There’s no urgency to fill holes on a team that’s almost certainly a year or more away from competing.

He is urging discipline when it comes to prioritizing his long-term plan for the Bears, and that was evident as he restrained himself in free agency as well as his apparent disinterest in trading for a wide receiver like the 49ers’ Deebo Samuel. If Poles gets this draft right, he can find his own version of Samuel at a fraction of the cost and his grand ideas in play for 2023 and beyond.

“I truly believe in homegrown talent,” Poles said. “I truly believe in drafting the right players and developing them here, and that will help us in the long run.

“It’s being disciplined in both keeping draft capital to draft the right players and develop them, as well as the financial commitment. There’s consequences for all of those actions.”

When Poles took the job, he held a second- and third-round pick, then two fifths and a sixth. That’s not much help to fix a team rife with deficiencies. He traded Khalil Mack to add another second-rounder, so the Bears are scheduled to pick at Nos. 39, 48 and 71 on Friday.

There are significant needs at cornerback, wide receiver and on the offensive line.

It’s highly unlikely Poles will trade up into the first round Thursday, instead saying he’d “be in the business [of] moving back and trying to create more [picks],” if the right offers present themselves.

As he worked to ensure that he gets this right, Poles had to blend his philosophy with the scouting staff he inherited. If he wants to make changes in that department, he’ll do it after the draft.

One new approach he tried was anonymity. In the process of finalizing the team’s draft rankings, Poles put scenarios up on the video screen and had his scouts vote for a selection with their cell phones in order to take self-consciousness out of the equation.

“You just want to remove groupthink,” he said. “If I polled everyone and you had to raise your hand, sometimes you look around. It just removes that… I put [the results] on the screen and you could hear the oohs and ahhs. It was a really cool exercise.”

He also tested his staff by running simulations of the draft to see who they’d pick based on who was available at those spots and had someone call in with various trade proposals.

Once he’d gone through all that, Poles was essentially done. He had a meeting scheduled Tuesday and then planned to step away ranking and analyzing until it was time to make some actual picks.

“You can talk yourself into anything at this point, he said. “That’s why I’m notovercookingthis board. I’m taking a step back. Sometimes you keep staring at it and you keep sliding guys around and doing crazy stuff.”

There’s no margin for crazy stuff. The Bears have too many problems and too few picks for that.

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Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash break down what new GM Ryan Poles said about the draft and whether the Bears will make any surprising moves in Round 2 or later.

New episodes of “Halas Intrigue” will be published regularly with accompanying stories collected on the podcast’s hub page. You can also listen to “Halas Intrigue” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Luminary, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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Before the league’s health and safety protocols tapped Zach LaVine out of Game 5 of the first-round playoff series, the Bulls guard was walking a fine line when discussing his left knee issues.

LaVine was doing his best to downplay the severity of the pain he’s been dealing with, but at the same time reminding everyone that the player everyone was seeing at the start of this season was not the same player on either side of the ball by the end.

Not easy to do considering what’s at stake for LaVine this offseason, as he walks into unrestricted free agency and his expected first huge pay day.

Maybe that’s why LaVine wasn’t completely transparent with the injury.

Back in early March, LaVine was discussing the severity of the discomfort and said, “me at 80%, 70%, whatever it is, I’m still one of the best players in the NBA and damn sure one of the best players on the court when we play.”

According to a source close to the situation, however, LaVine’s knee was “more like 50% and that’s on a good day.”

The source also said the maintenance of the knee the past few months was an all-day ordeal, and that there would have been a good number of All-Star-type players that would have shut it down for the season with all LaVine had to deal with.

And while LaVine wouldn’t come out and say for sure he was headed for off-season surgery — likely a scope — the source said he will in fact have surgery almost immediately this offseason. One scenario that had been ruled out, according to the source, was that the knee was degenerative and LaVine would be dealing with this long-term.

Good news for both the Bulls and LaVine, who by all expectations will sit down at some point together to discuss a max contract to keep LaVine a Bull. That doesn’t mean executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas deems LaVine untouchable from a sign-and-trade if an unexpected deal presents itself, but as of now the two sides seem to be on the same page with the direction of the roster.

The leap of faith the Bulls will be taking in this is that they will be extending the LaVine they watched play last summer with Team USA, and the one they had through December, before the knee really started swelling and giving the guard discomfort.

The numbers on both sides of the ball, especially defensive, tell the story of just how much LaVine was hampered.

While it was only six games in October, LaVine served notice to everyone how serious he was about playing on both ends of the floor, coming out and averaging 25.5 points per game on 48.1% shooting, but more impressively posting a 105.1 defensive rating, according to StatMuse.

The best defensive efficiency rating of LaVine’s career came in the 2019-20 season, when he posted a 110.4, so he was on pace to completely smash that.

By the time the knee started becoming a daily issue at the end of December, however, LaVine’s defense went out the window. In January, the efficiency was 117, by February 119.9, and in his 14 games played in March it was up to 121.5.

Obviously, the schedule was tougher in March, but LaVine’s offensive numbers were also down across the board in the second half.

So is maxing LaVine a dangerous gamble for the Bulls? Not if the LaVine they are investing in is the one they saw in the first few months of the season.

NOTE: Alex Caruso will miss Game 5 of the series, unable to test out of the concussion protocol. Caruso had to leave in the second quarter of Game 4 when he took a blow to the head.

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