Friday, March 23, 2007 |
Mark Prior Pitches! Water Falls From The Sky! Padres 1, Cubs 0 (5 Innings)
Strangely, it took a while to steer the conversation in the direction of the Cubs' chances this year, and in particular, what to do with Mark Prior. Now, the theory to date is that, since the Cubs' total meltdown in 2003 NLCS Game 6, Prior has never been the same. Injuries aside — and there are plenty of them, including a rumored, irrepairable, genetic "loose shoulder" — when he has been healthy, he hasn't pitched at all well. Anybody not named Mark Prior wouldn't ever have been given the opportunities needed to go 1-6 with a 7.21 ERA, as he did last year. Al's advice: hang on to him for another year, and if he isn't well, then cut him loose.
It struck me as wholly reasonable. Prior's mental approach seems to have changed; nothing about his mechanics looked, today, to be terribly off, but in the first inning I began to think he was back to his bad old self, allowing hit after hit on balls he was leaving consistently up in the zone. None of those hits were cheapies, either. If it hadn't been for Matt Murton making a beautiful throw to the plate to nail Padres starting catcher Josh Bard, the beating would have continued until Pinella decided to yank him.
But then he settled down in the second, managed some good outs, and even struck out Greg Maddux. There were too many line-drive flyballs hit right at gloves for me to be sanguine about his immediate future, but as Al wrote,
Is Mark Prior "back"? Heavens, no. It's one game, four innings, in spring training, though against a good team that was starting what is probably going to be its Opening Day lineup (although how the Padres can hit Josh Bard cleanup on an everyday basis is beyond me). Prior's stuff was better. His command was better. Is he ready for a major league mound? No, he's not. Is he ready for another spring training start? I would suspect so; next Tuesday against the Royals would make sense to me.And then this showed up:
Helen: (looking at the horizon) We're going to get soaked.And shortly thereafter we hightailed it out of the stadium. Or, at least that's what I tried to do after packing my camera in its (thankfully waterproof, so far) bag. There are two exits from the stadium on each side, a total of four each. One set, those toward the middle, are covered tunnels leading under the seating sections, while the other is simply a walkway around the edge of the seats. Since everyone was apparently intent on staying in the short covered section of the tunnel, instead of walking directly to their cars or into the main concourse where the concessions were, they decided to block the tunnel instead. This episode has absolutely shattered any little faith I had in humanity's intelligence on aggregate, because there was obviously plenty of space in the concourse for people to roam unmolested by the rain.
Rob: Nah. See all those rain streamers? They're way east of us. It'll pass by us on one side.A few minutes later...
Rob: (wiping a raindrop off his cheek) That's one.
Rob: (wiping a raindrop off his leg) That's two.
Rob: (wiping raindrops off several extremities) That's ten.
Helen, of course, was waiting for me in the concourse when the crowd ahead finally gave up their positions in the tunnel; she had already long ago solved the problem by just going around the stadium on the left field exit. Of course, she also got soaked in the process, as did her cellphone, which is likely a total loss. Topping off matters, it turns out that in circumstances where flash floods are possible, the city closes off streets that don't have bridges (at least, that is what I heard on the news), diverting thousands of motorists onto freeways, and snarling traffic even further. Bottom line, it took us an hour and thirty minutes to get back to the hotel. Phew.
Labels: cubs, spring training
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