Can we rain them all out?

Early in yesterday's loss to the Brewers, Elise Menaker did a side by side comparison of Cade to the second-to-last Cubs' pitching prospect to be worth a shit (Justin Steele probably deserves to to be put in between) since Mark Prior. And it started with both of them hiking their jersey sleeve up before every pitch, and pulling their hats down and wearing 22, and good god, what are we watching?

I was not at all convinced by the rest of it. Everybody's pitching mechanics (except for Chad Bradford circa 2002) at some point synch up and look pretty much the same. Horton's been a pleasant surprise for the Cubs, but nobody's winning a comparison to a healthy Mark Prior. If you were there, you know. He wasn't just good, he was incredible. But Elise's comp was fine and made some decent points, until Jim Deshaies got out his very tired saw about how the Cubs need to use Prior as a "cautionary tale" with how they handle Horton.

Jim Deshaies is good at his job. He was more fun when he was with Len Kasper because they didn't devolve into "look how clever we are" nonsense nearly as much as he and Boog do, but I digress.

Were the Cubs reckless with Mark Prior's pitch counts in 2003? Oh, hell yes, they were. In September alone he threw 757 pitches in six starts (an average of 126 per start).

But I've heard Deshaies dismiss Prior's rash of injuries before as "proof that there is no such thing as perfect mechanics." And that line chaps me for two reasons. One, because it hand waves away just how terribly Dusty Baker managed the best Cubs' pitching prospect of all-time. But second, because Prior's injuries all dated back to this: