Message #985875

[Kevrock]

Prior is not a fair comparrison for about a billion reasons.

http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2010/06/10/stras-wars-ii-the-prior-strikes-back/

Prior has taken a really bad rap for his mechanics, due to the disappointment that resulted from his meeting the fate of so many pitchers before him, despite having a delivery that had been labeled as “perfect.” The fact is that most of Prior’s injury problems had nothing to do with throwing a baseball, despite his posting some of the heaviest workloads in the Major Leagues while still sailing through the rough seas of the injury nexus.
The injuries that Prior endured were traumatic. First was the collision with Marcus Giles, a baserunning gaffe that caused damage to Prior’s shoulder in July of 2003. The injury would cost Prior his trip to the All Star game, but he only missed a few starts before coming back to the mound in early August. The then 22-year old pitched the rest of the season with no ill effects, going 10-1 with a 1.52 ERA in the 2nd half and finishing 4th in the majors for Pitcher Abuse Points, despite missing some time.

In May of 2005 there was the 100+ mph line drive off the bat of Brad Hawpe that drilled Prior in the pitching elbow, resulting in a compression fracture. Again, Prior came back quickly, missing just a month before returning to the mound on June 26. Once again he ranked among the top pitchers in baseball for PAP by the end of the season, finishing with the 3rd-highest total despite having 6 fewer starts than the other guys on the list.

Things began to fall apart in the Spring of 2006, and shoulder woes have plagued Prior ever since. A 2007 exploratory surgery by Dr. James Andrews revealed structural damage in the shoulder, and suggested that Prior may have never fully recovered from the Giles collision.

It has been almost four years since Prior’s last Major League pitch, and the primary cause of his pain is still a mystery. Maybe he came back too soon from his injuries, or perhaps his arm could not handle the extreme workloads incurred during the injury nexus. It could have been a conspiracy of factors, with a lethal combination of heavy workloads on a developing arm that was still recovering from injury during the 2003 and 2005 seasons. Perhaps the mechanics were somewhat responsible, though it’s a tribute to Prior’s mechanical efficiency that he performed as well as he did despite all of the obstacles.

I am pretty comfortable with the Prior comparison for Stephen Strasburg given all of their similarities, with the caveat that the comp is a good thing. I still look at Mark Prior’s delivery and see excellence, and Strasburg’s delivery stirs up more excitement than any pitcher I have seen since Prior was mowing down hitters five years ago.