Responding

Dave Pinto over at the excellent Baseball Musings blog noticed the comments made on this site about Mark Prior and his healthiness (kind of like Steven Colbert's "Truthiness"). He said a couple of things. First:

...you have trying to build teams to win a division. If you're the St. Louis Cardinals, building your team to try to beat the Cubs, you might spend more money if the Cubs have Mark Prior than if they don't. It's to Chicago's advantage to get the Cardinals to spend more now so they have less maneuvering room come the trading deadline. They want the all the teams in the division to think Prior is healthy, so they waste resources preparing for that possibility.

That's just silly. The Cardinals and Astros are not waiting to make personnel decisions based upon the health of one pitcher on one of their divisional opponents. Walt Jocketty isn't sitting around saying, "Well, maybe we should trade for Miguel Tejada. What? Prior's hurt? Cool. Cancel the Tejada deal." The Cards are trying to put the best team together of the players available to them.

Additionally, other teams aren't going to fall for media releases on the health of opponents' players. They are going to do their own scouting and make their own conclusions.

Dave continues:

So don't be too tough on the Cubs management. They want to sell tickets.

Hiding injuries to assist in selling tickets? What Pinto is actually saying (if he realizes it or not) is that the Cubs are actively perpetrating a fraud on their fan base.

Now, that might be possible, but even this site is not so jaded as to believe that is their actual intention.

Pinto concludes with a snide remark about what will happen to Prior:

Keep it as quiet as possible until the player goes on the DL.