Cubs prospect Ben Brown could be back 'really soon' — never mind camp cuts

MESA, Ariz. — Cubs pitching prospect Ben Brown was hoping the pain in his side last season would disappear on its own. But on his flight to Chicago to get it checked out, a sneeze made him realize it was more than a minor pull.

‘‘Not the flight to Chicago I was hoping for,’’ Brown said in a conversation with the Sun-Times.

Brown, 24, was on the cusp of a call-up before that oblique injury, which landed him on the injured list in early August. He was among the 12 players cut from the Cubs’ spring roster Friday, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is expected to contribute to the major-league team this season.

‘‘Generally when we get excited about young pitching prospects, it’s stuff,’’ manager Craig Counsell said Friday. ‘‘Certainly, Ben sits in that category. Then the next hurdle for really all players is [to] just go get people out, go perform. Do that, and he’ll knock the door down, for sure. And we’ll be asking about him soon. Really soon.’’

As much as Brown caught the Cubs’ attention last season, he should be even better equipped for the jump to the big leagues now.

‘‘Everyone can see my season last year was a tale of two seasons,’’ he said.

After Brown made only four starts at Double-A Tennessee, the Cubs promoted him to Triple-A Iowa, where his success continued. But he would have a high-scoring start sprinkled in now and again.

On June 25, he gave up six runs in the first inning to Memphis and was pulled after only two outs, a low point in his season. The next week, he limited Omaha to two runs in five innings in a nice bounce-back start. Then it happened again: six runs in 1⅓ innings against St. Paul.

‘‘We saw there was a huge mechanical discrepancy as the season went on,’’ Brown said. ‘‘I was really throwing across my body. I was working toward third base.’’

He was often athletic enough to compensate for it.

‘‘But my whole season, I was swaying off from what I do best,’’ he said. ‘‘And that’s working through the zone and working to the zone.’’

Still, Brown was being mentioned in conversations between the front office and then-manager David Ross about potential bullpen call-ups down the stretch.

The day before his last start in July, Brown felt some irritation in what he initially thought was his lat muscle. On his start day, he allowed one run in five innings.

‘‘That’s just the guy I am,’’ Brown said. ‘‘I want to pitch. I’ll grind through it. And I was hoping it would just go away the next day.’’

It didn’t. Brown was diagnosed with a strained left oblique. It was initially unclear whether he would be back before the end of the season, but he returned to the mound for Iowa on Sept. 3 as a reliever. Four of his seven appearances out of the bullpen were scoreless, but the other three bumped up his September ERA to 9.39.

‘‘Every single article you read about a Grade 2 oblique strain is two, three months [of recovery],’’ Brown said, praising the training staff at the Cubs’ complex in Arizona. ‘‘The fact that I was able to come back and compete in a month was really cool. So I can hold my head up high, knowing that I did everything I could do to come back and hopefully have the chance to make a difference.’’

This winter, which Brown spent throwing at the Cubs’ facility in Arizona, he cleaned up his back-leg mechanics. And he honed in on his three best pitches: his fastball and curveball, which always have been his bread-and-butter, and his changeup, which he added last year.

He also reflected on his mentality through the injury process.

‘‘It was frustrating,’’ Brown said. ‘‘And I think that’s why, when I came back, it was so hard on me. I put this pressure on myself to make a [big-league] debut before I turned 24 or all these things that I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. And I just saw them fold right in front of my face. So when I came back and still had an opportunity, I was just a mental mess.’’

The mental side of the game became a focus this offseason.

‘‘It’s going to make for one really cool story one day,’’ Brown said.