Three Stories, Done Deal

The Trib, Sun Times and Daily Herald all say today what was intimated last week. Mark Prior will start the season on the disabled list. But this is not big news. Careful readers of Cubs' news stories already knew this. See, the Cubs' brass still operates the same today as it did going back several years: Leak to the press what's going to happen through an innocuous statement to avoid the news becoming a surprise when it actually happens days later.

But the news of the day is that Kerry Wood is having his start delayed one day. Dusty "Truth in Advertising" Baker says that this is so that the Brewers don't get another look at Wood given that the Brewers play the Cubs 18 times this year. In other news, Dusty hired Wendell Kim to climb through the air ducts of Miller Park to steal the Brewers 6 years of tapes of Wood pitching against them.

While I may not be a big Kerry Wood fan, I would never suggest that I'd rather have Glendon Rusch or Ryan Dempster starting over Wood. This team is in huge trouble if it can't rely on both Wood and Prior. All that said, it's getting close to the time where this team must stop needing to rely on Kerry Wood. With his injury history and lack of dependability, maybe the Cubs go a different direction for a dependable starter. At $10.8 million per year, that's a lot to pay for partial seasons.

:::CORRECTION:::
After reading Bleed Cubbie Blue and rereading the above, I need to correct what I implied. The papers don't state that Prior will go on the DL. Rather, each paper is now taking the tack of suggesting he might go on the DL. The statement that, "Mark Prior will start the season on the disabled list," is purely conjecture on my part. That's what I meant, but my preference for a brevity of words in an individual post screwed it up.

This is what happens when you blog without... what do you call it... thinking.