Cubs News: Joc Pederson wasn’t having fun and now he’s on the IL

Joc Pederson probably envisioned a different start to his Cubs career. The swaggy slugging outfielder we saw during Cactus League play vanished as quickly as he appeared once the regular season began.

Now, Pederson is headed to the IL with a wrist injury, which could explain his ice-cold start at the dish. In 16 games this season, the former 11th-rounder is batting just .137/.262/.235 – a far cry from his eye-popping spring training numbers.

“It’s not very fun when you’re sucking and you’re losing,” Pederson said just two days ago. “It’s not fun. But you’ve got to enjoy the things you can and get back to the process and out of the results. Results drive us a little crazy at the start of the year.”

Chicago lured Pederson to the North Side by promising him the opportunity to play everyday, regardless of pitching matchups. That hasn’t gone well to this point (although, to be fair, he hasn’t done much hitting regardless of who’s on the mound).

• v RHP: .158/.298/.289
• v LHP: .077/.143/.077

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In fellow outfielder Ian Happ, we have a case of a guy who’s struggling – but has cause for optimism. A lot of the outlying metrics and data suggest he’s doing all the little things right and it’s a matter of time before he starts getting results. But with Pederson, that’s not the case at all, with his Baseball Savant page blanketed with sub-par offerings.

This is one of those instances where you hope this wrist has been a nagging sort of thing for a bit now and it’s kept Pederson from finding his groove and replicating his success from spring training.

Cubs: Nico Hoerner back in the meantime

In the meantime, Nico Hoerner is back to fill Pederson’s spot on the roster. His bat-to-ball skillset should play well for this offense, which looks like it’s picking up steam. Of late, Pederson has been little more than dead weight – so we could see things crank up another notch as he recovers from his injury.

Give him the time to get healthy and lock in – and then hopefully, he’s back and driving the offense in the ways Jed Hoyer envisioned when he signed him this offseason.

“I mean, you never really want to struggle,” Pederson said, “but you always want to kind of check yourself and have some checkpoints that, when things get a little bit out of whack, you know where to get back to and what changes might work, what changes don’t work and stuff like that. So it’s a hard game we play, but like I said, it kind of snuck up on me and that was a little frustrating.”