Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Bruce Levine talks Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki opening season on injured list

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Marshall Harris and Mark Grote were joined by Score baseball insider Bruce Levine to discuss the Cubs’ decision to place slugger Seiya Suzuki on the 10-day injured list to start the season due to his knee ailment.

Lela Rahimi, Marshall Harris, Mark Grody, Rahimi, Harrison Grody on 1043, the score. Firmund swings. It's a high-fly ball, deep left-center field, racing back, brown at the wall. Alex Bregman with his second home run of the spring. And the Cubs now up four to nothing over the Brewers here in the third. It's a nice day for the Cubs as they wallop the Milwaukee Brewers, 12 to nothing. Kate Horton also six strong innings. And yeah, Bruce, I know, I know.

The Brewers didn't have any of their regulars. Lots of stuff going on with the Cubs about which we will discuss with our baseball insider Bruce Levine in just a second. Just to let everybody know what's going on. Sayas Suzuki will open the season on the injured list. The Cubs manager, Craig Counsel, did confirm that today. The club also informed pitcher Ben Brown that he will make the opening day roster. Javier Assad will be optioned to AAA and start the season in the Iowa.

rotation. You know Bruce Levine. He is on X. At MLB, Bruce Levine, he covers the Cubs and the White Sox for 104-3 the score. Hello, Bruce. How are you? Hi, guys. You gave all the information. So back to you. Well, let's start with Sayah. I guess, Bruce, that is, it's not good that he's going on the injured list, but I guess best case scenario in terms of how little he will miss of the season to begin? Counsel has alluded to the fact that it would be a short period of time, maybe a week or 10 days. He has to go on the 10-day aisle.

I think it can be backtracked here. So, you know, he might miss a week if the knee comes around. He hasn't really done the full running part yet, started to hit in the cage and do some other drills. But when he gets into the full sprinting mode and, you know, recovers the next day, okay, that's that's when things will be okay and he'll come off the IL. In the meantime, Michael Conforto has made the team, the veteran who failed so miserably last year after having such a great career in New York and, you know, trying to make it back,

had a relatively good spring. If you go by spring training statistics, you know, hit the ball pretty hard and came into camp in good shape. So from that perspective, he's going to make the team, the one area that we don't know about. which is intriguing is the waiver wire. Everybody is releasing people over the next two days before the season starts. And with the fact that these rosters will have people that are leaving, the Cubs are looking for a backup infielder. They have Shaw, who's going to back up third and second,

and play some right field. So they're comfortable with that. But they really don't have outside Nico Horner a backup shortstop. They don't like taking a gold glove second baseman, moving them to short if Swanson has any issues health-wise. So even at AAA, they don't really have a shortstop of the quality they'll need to call up if somebody gets hurt. So, Bruce, I'm curious because you talked about Michael Comforto. We know that it's going to be Kate Cavali, a right-hander on opening day. Is this a situation where you think Matt Shaw is just going to be out there in right field,

regardless of righty-lefty? Or does Michael Conforto have a say in this from Craig Counsel's purview? Yeah, I mean, I don't think they would just grab Conforto and have them sit on the bench all year. So that's probably a game time situation that he'll have to make that lineup out. And, you know, again, we know that Shaw is a number one pick, a guy that is moving positions that will play all different positions. honestly, I hope it's Matt Shaw, nothing against Conforto,

but if you're going to play at Wrigley Field and you're going to be able to accomplish playing that position, which is probably and arguably the toughest position in all of baseball because of the wall, the wind, the sun, the elements, I'd like to seem out there as much as possible, and that includes opening day. But that's me. That's certainly not counsel saying that Conforto is a left-handed bat. that they'll like in the lineup. We know Bayosteros is going to be the DH against almost all,

if not all, of the right-handed pitchers that they face. So that's a situation that will be addressed probably. We probably won't know until Wednesday or Thursday. Bruce, I love listening to you and David Haw on Saturday in a special two-hour edition of Inside the Clubhouse. And one of the things that piqued my interest was the fact that you said one of the most underreported parts of spring training was the offense. the at-bats from Matt Shaw.

What did you mean by that? Well, Matt Shaw, you know, and I heard you guys talking about it earlier in your show, you know, playing the Ron Kumer piece from our show on Saturday, that, you know, he changed his batting style. And he got rid of the leg kick that was so extreme. And as Kuhm explained, keeping his head up rather than moving forward. When he's swinging, all was all a part of that. that funky swing that had him all over the place most of the season last year,

even though he was an 800 OPS guy the second time he came back, there were still elements that were missing. So they reworked the swing, and he was hitting the ball hard all spring long. Again, you don't put a lot of credence into the spring training numbers, but you do look at how players are reacting to instruction, and it looked like he found a comfort zone and looked extraordinary. nearly comfortable and well when he was out there on the field. I'm really curious, Bruce, about Ben Brown making this team and Javier Si being sent down.

I understand it. I'm just curious as to the role that Ben Brown is actually going to have once the season starts. Is he going to be a multiple innings use guy? How do you see his role with this bullpen? Well, Marshall, it's a great question because I think the beginning of the year is different than any other time in the season. So, you know, guys are coming out of spring training. They're used to throwing four innings.

They've only worked their way up to 70 to 80 pitches. If something happens early in the first few games, even the first week or 10 days, you're going to need long men. And, you know, right now they have Colin Ray, who's their number one long guy and was a savior to the staff last year when Steele went down with an injury. And he made 28 really good starts for the Cubs last year. You have the one guy, but early in the year, I think the thinking is that you're going to need more than one long guy because of whether it's a, let's say you have early season rain, two innings into the game.

It's an hour and a half delay. You're not coming back with your starting pitcher. So I think having more than one long man with Ray and then Brown being available, I think it is something of value that they look at. you know, the hard part was figuring out whether Brown should be going to AAA along with Assad, working every five days and being ready to come up and be a starter if one of your starters goes down. But Assad is going to be that guy for now. And Brown will be part of the bullpen. And I think he can pitch in any part of the bullpen, really. I mean, you have that 97-mile-an-hour fastball and that knuckle curve coming out of the bullpen late as well.

So he's accomplished an awful lot this year mentally. He's really grown into the position of not second-guessing himself, not over-analyzing situations, just going out there and pitching, came into camp extraordinarily strong, built himself up in the upper body and in the preseason during the winter. So I think he's ready to go. And he's, when right, you know, we've seen it. I mean, we've seen him dominate lineups, just the inconsistency, which has kept him back.

A few more minutes with our very own Bruce Levine, who covers the Cubs and White Sox, right here on 104-3 The Score. Also, the co-host of Inside the Clubhouse alongside our very own David Haw, Saturday mornings 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Another one of the guests that you guys had on was Michael Bush, loved hearing what Bush had to say, and it looks like they're going to trust him against lefties this year. What could that mean for Michael Bush this season? It can mean 150 games, and maybe the 34 home runs is right where it was last year.

I don't know if anybody would complain about 34 home runs again from Michael Bush, or with those extra additive bats against lefties will be a number that goes higher. I think that everybody would be happy with 35 homers and 90 to 100 RBIs, just like he had last year. we always look at players good years especially younger players and i think michael is 27 or 28 now and we say well he did it last year so he should be getting better that was a pretty damn good year right so i think i think they'll take that again no i think you're right bruce and i i'm so curious because we saw the plan that he was on as far as more of a platoon guy last year is that straight up

what it's going to be for moises by austeris because i would love see him in the lineup against some lefties along the way to see if he can do it. Well, he might be, Marshall, he might be, like you say, he might be the exception to the rule. I know you are a huge proponent of his and so am I. And anybody that watches them, I'm talking about scouts from other teams and front office people that I talk to, none of them have anything but desire to get them by Astero's in their organization. They just think he's, you know, he just turned 22. So they think the sky is the limit for him as far as just being a doubles machine,

a guy that's eventually going to hit home runs. And a guy that, you know, never looks off balance in his swing. I think, you know, Ron Kumar talked about this on Saturday as well, the fact that whether he swings and misses or not, he always looks like he's on a pitch. He never looks awkward. So there's a natural swing there that's really fun to watch. And it's a swing that it hits into each gap, left field, right field.

So eventually they feel he's going to hit against both. And we'll see if a council has that as part of his plan going into the season. Bruce, pardon me if I'd missed it. But do we know the order of the rotation after Matthew Boyd? Yeah, so we do. So after Matthew Boyd, it's Cade, Horde. Horton, who pitched six innings against a no-name lineup yesterday. Kept texting me that. You're right, Bruce. Tell him, Bruce. You're right. You're right. You're

always right. Well, in this case, I'm only right because the Milwaukee team already had already flown back to Milwaukee. So those were all extra guys, most of them not making the team. They had a couple of their pitchers that are going to be on the 13 rotation. But that was, but don't take anything away from a Horton. He's going to be outstanding. And then, and then it's, after that, it's, you're going to be looking at Imanaga, Cabrera, and then Tyone. That's your top five.

So, Imenaga, before Cabrera. So Imenaga, because they want to go lefty right, you left, like, just to mix it up. That's, yeah, Marshall, that's how it looks. So, and again, when you look at the rotation, rotation, you know, there's, if you could project good health for that rotation, and each in every one of those guys, I believe, each and every one of them last year was hurt at one time or another. And a couple for significant periods of time, like Tyone and Imanaga were out for extensive periods of time, five, six weeks. So with that in mind, they have good health and then they have fortification of Brown and they have Assad who, I feel is really the guy that's really getting ripped off. He was a tremendously important pitcher for them in 2024, kind of doing the swing man stuff and doing it well.

Last year he was hurt for a long period of time with an oblique and came back and, you know, pitched a little bit toward the end of the year. But he's kind of the forgotten guy right now. He's out of the mix, and he'll be pitching every five days at AAA. All right. Well, we're excited about that. one thing before we let you go, Bruce, earlier we were talking about the lineup yesterday, maybe looking like what an opening day lineup could be or a regular lineup.

I thought Nico Horner was a little far down. Don't you want to see him bat higher than fifth in the lineup? Yeah, I do, but I don't want to see. I heard your lineup and you had them, well, why not let them bat fourth? And there's, you know, it's not a wrong idea on your part, I don't think. It's just that I don't think counsel would consider batting Nico Horner fourth. So with that in mind, I go with what, you know, what the manager and how his thoughts go. Horner, and you guys mention this as well, he'll bet first, he'll lead off against left-handers at times.

With Bush in the lineup all the time now, it might change that equation, but I don't think so. But, you know, I'm in agreement with you, and that is, Nico Horner was the best player on the Cubs last year. and they had a lot of good players, a lot of great years. But consistency-wise, all the way around offensively, defensively, on the bases, leadership, that was my guy. So anywhere you want to put him in the lineup, I think he's going to do a good job. I just don't think counsel will put him forth. You're the best, Bruce.

Thanks for coming on. You've had a busy day, and I know you'll be tracking the preseason game that's happening with the Cubs and Yankees coming up on the score in a little bit. Thanks, Bruce. Guys, next time let's talk a little bit about the White Sox. too. Yes, we could do that. We could definitely do that. Yes. We shall. I'm writing it down. It's a promise. Talk socks with Bruce. Yeah. Yes. See you guys. Bye, Bruce. That is Bruce Levine right there.