Welcome to your late night, indie coffee shop and bar where we’re serving up all the drinks you need early in the baseball season. Whether it’s a glass of wine to chill after work or a cup of coffee to keep you rolling when the Cubs start late on the West Coast (more on that later this week), we’ve got you covered here at BCB After Dark. Be sure you tip your servers and bus your own tables so we turn everything back to Josh in order after the weekend.

The Cubs are off to a pretty good start this season with a 9-6 record, but they got some bad news earlier this week when Justin Steele hit the injured list with left elbow tendonitis. We’ll talk more about the potential implications and seriousness of that injury after some tunes.

I spent some time earlier this week hiking in The Great Smoky Mountains and wow barely begins to cover it. It was also sort of perfect to hear John Prine as we drove from hike to hike in one of the most scenic parts of Appalachia, including his last recorded song:

I Remember Everything is a beautiful little melody where the simplicity is part of why the song hits so deeply:

I’ve been down this road before
I remember every tree
Every single blade of grass
Holds a special place for me
And I remember every town
And every hotel room
And every song I ever sang
On a guitar out of tune

I remember everything
Things I can’t forget
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew

The song just fits the awesome scenery in the Smokies where dense forests give way to flowers, meadows and the occasional spectacular waterfall.

John Prine is at his best when he’s telling the tales our souls whisper to us that are just out of reach. The fact that his final recording as one of America’s greatest troubadours is a reflection and meditation on the simplest moments in a brilliant traveling career is just perfection:

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Careful not to let my past
Go sneaking up on me
Got no future in my happiness
Though regrets are very few
Sometimes a little tenderness
Was the best that I could do

I remember everything
Things I can’t forget
Swimming pools of butterflies
That slipped right through the net
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew

I don’t know if I remember everything, but I know I will always remember listening to this beautiful melody as the dew shone on a million blades of grass and budding leaves that I imagine Prine himself admired at some point in time.

Back here in Cubslandia I can’t help but remember that the pitcher who has served as the bedrock for the rest of the Cubs rotation the past two seasons is Justin Steele, who hit the injured list earlier this week. There were some notes of cautious optimism from the Cubs earlier this week given that this is the same injury Steele has dealt with previously and as recently as last fall:

“I was talking to [pitching coach] Tommy [Hottovy] and [manager Craig] Counsell throughout the start, and I was like, ‘My arm’s starting to tighten up on me a little bit,’ ” Steele said before Wednesday’s series finale against the Rangers. “I was at the fourth, fifth inning, was just doing stuff in between innings to keep it warm, moving [it] around and stuff.”

The discomfort lingered into Tuesday, and Steele arrived at Wrigley with the intention of doing extra day-after-pitching recovery work. The pain still was there, and the decision was made to place him on the IL.

Steele said the pain was similar to the elbow tendinitis that landed him on the IL in September 2024.

“I would say it’s similar to the previous situations that we encountered with it,” said Steele, who also went on the IL in June 2023 with a left forearm injury.

That history made the decision to shut him down easier — and gives the Cubs optimism that he won’t be out too long.

The thing is, this is definitely a glass half-full, glass half-empty type of situation. It is good to know this is similar to an injury he’s dealt with without awful ramifications in the recent past. It’s also troubling that one of the Cubs best pitcher, and arguably their staff ace, has been dealing with recurrent tendonitis in his elbow in his throwing arm. It’s especially concerning given that he had Tommy John surgery in 2017.

Beyond the questions about the injury to Steele, this is just a really tough part of the season to lose one of your best pitchers. The Cubs are currently en route to Los Angeles (don’t worry, we’ll be talking about the schedule in tomorrow’s BCB After Dark) where they’ll face a Dodgers team who already took two games from the Cubs in Tokyo, before heading to San Diego to face off against the Padres again.

This is the type of situation that tests a staff’s pitching depth and while the Cubs have depth they can turn to, it’s unlikely they have a spare Justin Steele sitting around. There aren’t many pitchers in MLB who can turn in a performance like this:

Looking at the current roster most would project Steele’s next start to go to Colin Rea and listen, I don’t really love the idea of Rea facing the Dodgers at home, but that appears to be where this team is right now.

So I ask you, Cubs fans: can the Cubs keep winning with Justin Steele on the IL?