Good morning, Chicago.

Surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee will put Cubs starter Matthew Boyd out of action for six weeks, manager Craig Counsell said. It was another blow to the Cubs pitching staff, which already has weathered more than its fair share of adversity over the first six weeks of the season, and another chapter in the annals of freakish Cubs injuries.

Boyd suffered the injury while innocently playing with his kids, according to Counsell, though we’ve yet to hear the full story from the veteran left-hander, so it’s too soon to know just how freakish it was.

The Cubs beat the Reds 8-3 after the news for their ninth straight win and 15th in a row at Wrigley, leaving them 19-3 in their last 22 games. So it's an obstacle the team is eminently capable of overcoming.

As a senior fellow at the Institute of Completely Useless Cubs Information (ICUCI), Paul Sullivan has chronicled several incidents over the years that originally were labeled a Cubbie Occurrence but turned out to be random clickbait for Cubs fans. When he asked AI on Thursday to define the term, it called a CO "an unexpected, bizarre and uniquely unfortunate piece of bad luck or an exotic injury happening to the Chicago Cubs baseball team."

Boyd's injury is bad luck for sure, but until he explains the circumstances, we can't say for sure if it's truly bizarre.

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