Spring Training: Kerry Wood Already Injured?
Written By: Scott | Category: Cleveland Indians | Comments: 17
When the Indians signed Kerry Wood to a two-year, $20.5 million contract this past winter, a lot of pundits felt that Mark Shapiro made one of the best moves of the off season. A top flight closer for a short contract, one that is considerably less than other teams were paying at the time. Yet the Cubs, Woods former team, did not even nudge at the deal as they had obviously moved on after many injury-plagued seasons. Wood has had a history of arm troubles, spending a considerable amount of his career on the disabled list.
Which makes this news all the worse to read.
Wood, who had a history of arm injuries with the Chicago Cubs, hasn’t thrown off a mound since last weekend because of an aching back and the Indians will rest him for a few more days before he pitches again.
Many fans may be throwing their arms in the air, but I do not think this is much to worry about at this stage in the spring. Eric Wedge has gone on record to say that it is “nothing to be concerned about.” Of course, Wedge said the exact same things when discussing Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez last season before both players missed a large amount of time with what were significant injuries.
As long as it is not the shoulder or elbow that is of concern, I’m going to have to believe Wedge. For now, at least. The team obviously wants their big free agent ready for the regular season, and is in no hurry to get him throwing with the opening of the Cactus league against the Giants. Fresh off of a 34-save season, Wood is scheduled to throw a bullpen session tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to grab your own Kerry Wood-inspired shirt from the WFNY shop. It will help the healing process, so I’m told.
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Indians closer Kerry Wood slowed by sore back [Tom Withers/Associated Press]
Author: Scott
Scott is a co-founder/editor of Waiting For Next Year who resides in Cleveland, Ohio. Feel free to follow him on Twitter or email him at scott@waitingfornextyear.com.Scott has written 1701 articles for Waiting for Next Year.
Two things:
– Closing is all about the bottom-line, so I don’t feel justified in passing judgment on Wood until he starts missing regular season games.
– What’s up with that shirt? To distinguish it from the (identical) tasteless & very-family-unfriendly variety, shouldn’t it read: “got Wood?”
As long a he doesn’t go Mo Vaughn falling into the Angels bench on the first play of the season, we’ll be okay….
And without his past injury history and being injury prone he would have signed with someone else for more years and many, many more dollars. Heck, he wouldn’t even be a reliever. This was an “eyes wide open,” calculated risk by Shapiro. Kerry Wood just comes with injuries, and Shapiro knew he wouldn’t go long without something, but he just calculated that his contributions over 2 years will justify $20M. He will most likely be on the DL some time this year or next year, and maybe both. But if he’s ready to go in most of our stretches of big games, he will be worth it. It’s like owning a Jaguar: it’s great to drive WHEN it’s not in the shop.
OMG THE LACK OF INFO FROM WEDGE MUST BE RELATED TO SHAPIRO WHO IS MANGINI’S IN LAW!!!!! IT’S ALL MANGINI!!!
Hopefully Wood can sack up and pitch well this year.
deep13 – Tasteless? And it’s a play off of the ‘milk’ ads, soley lower case.
Harv, right on. Which makes having Perez and Lewis that much more valuable.
Scott- I understand that. To illustrate my point, just do a Google search for “got wood?”, look at the results (including pictures), and note that none of them have anything to do with the Indians or Kerry Wood.
And sorry if this is slightly off the Wood topic, but does anyone else smell Shapiro working on a deal to package one of our surplus catchers with, maybe, a Garko for a real 3rd or 4th grizzled old starter? Just can’t believe we’ll go long with so many unproven starters.
Right. And Google “Wham” or “Captain Clutch” and I bet none of the results return Joe Tait or Phil Dawson. I would think the giant “34″ on the back differentiates enough…
Harv – there are rumors about Pedro Martinez, but he very may well be.
Keith Hernandez’s 1990 season thinks 2009 Kerry Wood is weak.
#8 Harv 21 – why would we trade Garko and a catcher for a 3rd or 4th starter? I would rather go with an “unproven starter” than give away younger talent for a middle of the line pitcher.
Scott, with front/back differentiation in mind, here’s another t-shirt idea for you:
(front) “I’VE GOT WOOD”
(back) “ON MY FANTASY TEAM”
Nothing wrong with that, right?
I’ll pass… I prefer the one we have. Thanks for the recommendation though.
this may have been discussed and i missed it, but how’d it happen that no team took a flyer out on marte? and what does it mean now, option-wise? if he gets called up again, does he have to pass waivers again if they want to send him back down to columbus?
toledo – we actually have something on marte coming later today. stay tuned.
[...] Kerry Wood working on becoming full strength after sustaining some tightnessin his back, the oft-injured right-hander appears to be keeping him company over the next few days. [...]