Cole Hamels Takes Paternity Leave, James Norwood Recalled

Cole Hamels will be away from the Cubs for a few days as he takes paternity leave, but he’ll rejoin the team for his next scheduled start on Saturday. That frees up a roster spot for James Norwood, who has made one big-league appearance this season after tossing 11 innings for the Cubs last season.

Not a bad strategy to swap a starter for a reliever when the former wasn’t going to be needed over the course of a brief road trip. It’d be best for the Cubs to make Norwood superfluous by scoring a bunch of runs against all three Mets starters. Actually, that’d be best for all the Cubs pitchers from here on out.

This situation could come up more frequently moving forward, as the featured image may be responsible for a large number of pregnancies throughout Cubdom and beyond. In all seriousness, this leave is actually related to the Hamels family adopting a child. He and his wife, Heidi, adopted daughter Reeve from Ethiopia in 2013 and Heidi’s Instagram story from Monday said the family was heading to “meet their little sister.”

Congratulations to the Hamels family on the new addition.