THE PATIENCE OF MARK PRIOR

If you know me, you know I love and have always loved Mark Prior, in between his injuries of course. This is a guy that has pitched great while healthy, but the healthy moments are few and far between and if you look at his list of injuries through the years, he’s been hurt more than healthy. It’s quite fascinating actually.

Well, Mark Prior's patient, more patient than any man I know that continually takes a beating like he has. Why? Because late last week, Mark Prior was in a game. I'm NOT KIDDING. With all the injury and pain there is 1 thing Prior has that the other injury prone ballplayers don't have... resilience.

That's why I don’t give up on Prior because he doesn't give up on himself. I know he’s got the talent and I know the Yankees do too, if they didn’t, they would have cut him loose months ago. I say stay the course, let this guy heal and try to make it back to the big show, even if it’s 1 inning just to see if he still has it. After all, the money spent is minimal and who knows, maybe, just maybe he can make it back to contribute and see if there’s any lightening in that bottle. Don’t forget, at one point in his career, he was 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA. That was with the Chicago Cubs. Yes, In fairness, it was 8 years ago, but it’s raw talent. I can only imagine where he’d be in the record books if he was healthy. Yeah, it sounds stupid that I’m living in the past... it's definitely stupid, but I believe in him.

So, here are the details, in his Gulf League outing last Friday, Prior pitched 16 pitches, 9 of them were strikes. After he pitched, he said he felt good. That's great as far as I'm concerned. Read about it HERE. According to MLB, "Prior then recorded two strikeouts on 10 pitches, both on nasty curveballs that were clocked at 79 mph and 80 mph. His fastball throughout the outing ranged between 90 mph and 92 mph."
And I found this nuggest interesting. When talking about the different pitches he threw MLB has this from Prior:

"I figured something out with the grip, and I kind of hold it like a slider now. It used to go back too far, so I changed my grip just a tiny bit, and that's made a huge difference. I've been drawing on the ball to practice it, and that's helped out a lot." Prior got the tip from Roy Halladay and said it's been useful. "I have a lot more trust and confidence with it now," he said.

I'm looking forward to Prior's next outing, and to hopefully making it back to the big show.

And speaking of the big show, just wanted to let ya'll know that the Yankees may have released lefty JC Romero from his minor league contract recently, but it doesn't mean their done with looking at lefty pitching. The Texas Rangers released Arthur Rhodes and he has become a free agent. The Yankees are interested in the 41 year old. Read about it HERE. If they did sign Rhodes, it would be to a minor league deal. Anyway... stay tuned.

Please comment and let me know what you think and follow me on Twitter @BleednYankeeBlu and join the group Bleeding Yankee Blue on Facebook, just type it in.