Cleveland Indians: How serious is Andrew Miller’s injury?

The Cleveland Indians were able to pull out a 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night. That’s the good news. The bad news is Andrew Miller had to leave the game with an injury.

Breathe. Don’t panic, just breathe. The world is not going to end. Injuries happen to every team and they overcome them every year. Regardless, this was not the sight anyone wanted to see.

Luckily, the Tribe was able to get the win despite their best reliever only throwing two pitches before leaving with an injury.

If Miller is out for an extended period of time you would likely see Nick Goody play a much larger role in that bullpen and move into the setup spot that Miller currently occupies. Also Tyler Olson is probably going to have to step up as well.

But hopefully this is not something that is a recurring issue or keeps Miller out for an extended period of time.

How serious is Miller’s injury?

Fortunately, the injury does not appear to be serious. Just appears to be a slight strain of his hamstring. Obviously the Cleveland Indians are going to be very careful with this and the MRI will tell us a lot more that we will find out tomorrow.

If this is a Grade 1 hamstring strain Miller might miss the next few games but probably won’t need a DL stint. If somehow it comes back to being a Grade 2 strain, that is a minimum four weeks on the disabled list and could go up to eight weeks. This does not appear to be a Grade 2 strain given the way Miller reacted to the injury.

Could this be a recurring injury?

Possibly. But as long as Miller gets the necessary rest and isn’t rushed back too quickly, there should be no long term issues.

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s that the season is still young. We’re only in April. If the Indians had to lose Miller for a few days or, worst case scenario, a few weeks, it’s better to have that now, in April, than in September or October.

Miller will be fine. He’ll just need a few days of rest and probably won’t pitch in this next series. After that, he’ll probably be full go. But we won’t know for sure until the team gets the MRI results on Thursday.

Next: 3 takeaways from 4-1 win over Cubs

The Cleveland Indians may have dodged a bullet with this injury. At this point it appears to only be a minor inconvenience when it could have been a major problem.