Cubs’ Justin Steele leaves start vs. Rays with left forearm tightness

Cubs lefty Justin Steele was cruising against the best offense in baseball. The ball felt good coming out of his hand. His four-seam fastball was generating swings on the inside of the plate from the Rays’ right-handed-heavy lineup, playing into his game plan.

The Cubs couldn’t, however, ignore the throbbing near Steele’s elbow.

“It sucks,” Steele said after the Cubs’ 4-3 loss Wednesday. “But it happens.”

After three perfect innings, Steele left his start with what the team called left forearm tightness. Steele and manager David Ross described the move as “precautionary.” Imaging scheduled for Thursday will reveal the severity of the injury. Steele is scheduled to rejoin the team in San Diego after undergoing the testing.

Forearm and elbow pain set off alarm bells in a sport with a high rate of Tommy John surgery, an operation that usually requires recovery times of more than a year. Steele, who underwent the procedure on his left elbow in 2017, said he did not think this injury was “anything like that.”

“He’s just been lights-out this year,” first baseman Trey Mancini said. “I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know a ton about him before I came to the Cubs. But I’ve been so impressed by the way he handles himself, goes out there. To have basically two pitches and do what he does is incredible. So hopefully it’s nothing major and he’ll be back with us soon. But it’s hard to put into words how important he is to this team.”

Steele said he first felt tightness and “throbbing” in his forearm before going out for the third inning. The news made its way to Ross.

“Radar went way up, obviously,” Ross said. “Talked to the trainers, they felt comfortable.”

To open the third inning, Steele induced a groundout to third base from Christian Bethancourt. Then he threw a first-pitch, 80-mph slider, the slowest pitch he’d thrown all day, to Taylor Walls up and out of the zone.

Ross and the trainers had been keeping tabs on Steele’s movements on the mound as he pumped his hand and stretched his forearm between pitches. Steele said he didn’t feel the discomfort in his throwing motion, only afterward when he was walking around the mound.

Head athletic trainer Nick Frangella and Ross met with Steele on the mound. They talked, and he stayed in the game.

“He said he didn’t feel it at all,” Ross said, “no tingling, no shots down the arm, anything like that. So, let him finish.”

Steele needed just four more pitches to get the last two outs of the inning. Third baseman Patrick Wisdom made a diving snag to catch a tailing line drive up the line from Walls. Then Wisdom knocked down a sharp grounder from Jose Siri for the third out.

“The more I watched him throw, the more nervous I got of a guy like that,” Ross said. “So just went ahead and, [for] precautionary reasons, pulled him.”

Right-hander Hayden Wesneski replaced Steele in the fourth inning.

Steele has been one of the Cubs’ two best pitchers this season, along with Marcus Stroman. Entering Wednesday, he had the fifth-best ERA in the National League among qualified pitchers.

Then he shaved his ERA down to 2.65 with what was promising to be a dominant start against the best team in baseball. Before Wednesday, Steele pitched into at least the sixth inning in all but one start.