Shoulder Injury

Reports are coming in that the Prior shoulder injury is merely a strain, rather than a, God forbid, tear or anything like that. This should probably push back his schedule a bit too. None of the reports I've seen seem to say how long he should be out, though I'm guessing a week. Certainly starting the second game of the season is out of question.

Luckily we have a lot of off days early in the season, so we won't need the full 5-man rotation probably for the whole first month of the season. I wonder why no one else has seen this as a mixed blessing though, since logic dictates to us that more off dates early in the season means less down the stretch, when the players really need the rest.

I also don't care for the people who bash Dusty, Hendry, et al about "overworking" the horses on the team. As Dusty pointed out, these guys are horses, and I think their injuries have more been due to bad luck (in Prior's case) or a history of bad mechanics (in Wood's case). It's not like Zambrano is having any problems and he's done the most work of all three of them, knock on wood. Hell, two or three years ago everyone was raving that Prior had the best mechanics in the game, and that every young pitcher should emulate his delivery.