Nobody knows when fans will see Kris Bryant's name in the Cubs lineup again.
It'd be easy to just project out when he's due to come off the disabled list (Aug. 3), but it's not that simple.
The fact is: There's so much unknown right now and the lack of answers is a cause of great concern and anxiety among both the fanbase and the Cubs organization.
The Cubs don't know exactly what's wrong with Bryant's left shoulder or why it started acting up again this week despite a two-week stint on the disabled list a few weeks ago.
Bryant is going in for another MRI to make sure they didn't miss anything the first time around.
While he was working his way back from the first DL trip in early July, Bryant revamped his swing a bit to limit the stress on that shoulder on the follow-through of his swing. Yet that still didn't do the trick, as he aggravted the joint Monday night on a swing against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
"We just thought — let's re-test it," Joe Maddon said. "He's gonna get another MRI and just go back to that process and make sure we were right that first time. And then work from there.
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"I think once he goes through this next test, that's gonna help a lot. To find out if there's anything we missed the first time. And hopefully not and then I think the docs will derive a gameplan from there."
The Cubs don't have a timetable right now on when they may see Bryant back, but that's to be expected with so many questions currently unanswered.
Bryant has to get to a point where he and the Cubs can both be confident that he's not going to re-aggravate the shoulder on any random swing between his return and whenever the Cubs are eliminated from the playoffs.
Imagine this shoulder still being a question mark entering a National League wild-card game or the NLDS. So many people would be cringing anytime Bryant took a big swing or missed and had a particularly violent follow-through.
Even when he does return, will he still be the same hitter that made him the 2016 NL MVP?
He hasn't looked like himself since the injury first occured in late May (.256 AVG, .714 OPS in 32 games) and he will have to continue to revamp his follow-through, which is an underrated part of a hitter's swing.
"He was attempting to control his finish differently," Maddon said. "He may have been doing some things subconsciously prior to us putting him on the DL [the first time]. But then he intentionally tried to restructure it a bit after it became more noticeable to him.
"Moving forward, you know how he finishes so long with that one-arm finish. I think there was some concern that that was part of the issue. Actually, weirdly, when somebody gets hurt and they come back, if you want to change anything, that's the time to change it.
"It's easier to rebuild a different habit coming off of an injury, so as you work back through it, maybe you can attempt to do something. And I'm not saying anything radical. Just something that takes a little pressure off of that finish. So we'll see."
However long Bryant is on the shelf for this time, the Cubs will have to get by with a combination of Ian Happ, David Bote and Tommy La Stella at third base. They could also move Javy Baez to the hot corner and replace him at second with Bote, La Stella, Happ or Ben Zobrist.
Either way, the Cubs have to be feeling grateful right now that they haven't traded away from their surplus of position-player depth.