Caleb Thielbar left the Cubs’ game with an injury on April 23, 2026, walking off with a trainer as Chicago kept rolling and won for the ninth time in a row. The exit came in a night the Cubs turned into another comeback win, beating the Phillies after Seiya Suzuki launched a go-ahead home run in the bottom of the eighth inning.
The Cubs had already been playing from a position of strain in the bullpen, which was described as insanely depleted even before Thielbar went down. That made the left-hander’s exit especially notable because he had been Chicago’s best remaining reliever and its highest-leverage option on a night when the team needed every arm it could trust.
Chicago still found enough offense to finish the job. Ian Happ homered, Michael Busch homered, and Suzuki’s drive — his seventh home run of the season — carried 110.7 MPH off the bat and traveled 429 feet, a loud answer in a game that kept tilting late. The Cubs’ social account captured the moment in all caps: “SEIYYYYAAAAA!!” and later, after the win, “WATCH OUT ON WAVELAND.”
The victory gave the Cubs their third straight over the Phillies and extended a run that has become their best since 2016. It also sharpened the tension around what comes next, because a team already working through an exhausted bullpen now has to navigate the possibility that the reliever it was leaning on most may be unavailable.
Thielbar had been good for the Cubs in 2025, and that is why his departure carried immediate weight beyond one night’s score. Chicago can survive a bad inning. It is harder to absorb a loss of relief depth when the bullpen is already stretched this thin and the games keep coming.
The Cubs got the win. They may have paid for it anyway.
