{"id":5098,"date":"2013-12-11T07:35:50","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T13:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=5098"},"modified":"2013-12-09T21:21:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T03:21:10","slug":"ending-with-a-whimper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/ending-with-a-whimper\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending With A Whimper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2591590_large\"<\/a>7 seasons after his last major league appearance, former Cub phenom Mark Prior called it a career on Monday. \u00a0The second overall pick in the 2001 draft, Prior quickly rose to the major leagues, making his debut on May 22, 2002, earning the victory against the Pirates. \u00a0He excelled the following year, as a surprising Cubs team won their division and came within 5 outs<\/a> of making their first World Series since 1945. \u00a0Prior finished the year 18-6, was named to the All Star team,\u00a0finished third in Cy Young award voting and was ninth in voting for the MVP award.<\/p>\n

2003 was also the start of Prior’s injury issues. \u00a0He hit the disabled list after colliding with Marcus Giles in a game in early July. \u00a0Thanks to the All Star break, he only missed 3 starts, but he never pitched a full season after that point. \u00a0He missed the first 2 months of the 2004 season due to an achilles injury. \u00a0In 2005, he again started the season on the disabled list and went back on after suffering a broken elbow after getting hit by a line drive off the bat of Brad Hawpe. \u00a02006 marked the third straight season that Prior would start the season on the DL, where he would stay until June 18. \u00a0Less than a month later, he would return to the DL with a strained oblique suffered during batting practice. \u00a0On August 10, Prior made his final start of the season, going 3 innings and picking up the loss to the Brewers. \u00a0Four days later, he was placed on the DL for the third and final time that season, due to tendinitis. \u00a0He would never pitch in the major leagues again.<\/p>\n

Prior left the Cubs following the 2007 season, and, since then, he has attempted comebacks with the\u00a0Padres, Rangers, Yankees, Red Sox, and, most recently, the Reds, where he had to be\u00a0shut down as a result of continuing shoulder problems after just 7 relief appearances in Triple A. \u00a0You couldn’t help but feel for him, a once in a lifetime stud pitcher who should have led the Cubs rotation for years and, instead, flamed out after 5 seasons. \u00a0Entire books could be written on what might have been, and now Mark Prior will have his summers free to read them.<\/p>\n

Prior\u2019s numbers in a Cub uniform, both for games I attended and overall, were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/tfoot>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 seasons after his last major league appearance, former Cub phenom Mark Prior called it a career on Monday. \u00a0The second overall pick in the 2001 draft, Prior quickly rose to the major leagues, making his debut on May 22, 2002, earning the victory against the Pirates. \u00a0He excelled the following year, as a surprising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[121,120,4191,1491,231,112,111,258,53,51],"class_list":["post-5098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","tag-brewers","tag-cubs","tag-marcus-giles","tag-mark-prior","tag-padres","tag-pirates","tag-rangers","tag-red-sox","tag-reds","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5100,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions\/5100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Wins<\/span><\/th>\nLosses<\/span><\/th>\nERA<\/span><\/th>\nSaves<\/span><\/th>\nIP<\/span><\/th>\nHits<\/span><\/th>\nRuns<\/span><\/th>\nER<\/span><\/th>\nWalks<\/span><\/th>\nStrike Outs<\/span><\/th>\nHR<\/span><\/th>\nHBP<\/span><\/th>\nGames<\/span><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
12<\/span><\/td>\n6<\/span><\/td>\n3.58<\/span><\/td>\n0<\/span><\/td>\n151<\/span><\/td>\n129<\/span><\/td>\n64<\/span><\/td>\n60<\/span><\/td>\n56<\/span><\/td>\n179<\/span><\/td>\n18<\/span><\/td>\n7<\/span><\/td>\n24<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
42<\/span><\/td>\n29<\/span><\/td>\n3.51<\/span><\/td>\n0<\/span><\/td>\n657<\/span><\/td>\n582<\/span><\/td>\n277<\/span><\/td>\n256<\/span><\/td>\n223<\/span><\/td>\n757<\/span><\/td>\n77<\/span><\/td>\n31<\/span><\/td>\n106<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n