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Ted Llilly Panic Time? | Print |  E-mail
Written by Justin Bridgman   
Thursday, 05 November 2009 09:14

There are some things every baseball fan never wants to hear about players on their team. Perhaps the worst of all (besides a visit to Dr. James Andrews by your ace) is that a starting pitcher on your team had shoulder surgery. It doesn't matter what kind of surgery it is, that is scary stuff. So when I saw that Ted Lilly underwent arthroscopic shoulder surgery on Tuesday I quickly went through the stages of pitcher injury news.

First I panicked because you don't want to see that a pitcher on your team had surgery. Then I thought, arthroscopic usually is a quick recovery time. Then I saw "expected to be back in April" from Jim Hendry. There couldn't be a bigger kiss of death. I refuse to stoop to the level of the Chicago media and compare this to Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. It isn't the same. Ted isn't a pansy like Prior and his arm is nowhere near has messed up as Wood's was. That isn't a fair comparison at all.

What is a fair point to bring up is that the Cubs love to lie about injuries, they love to lie about time tables, and they love to not make plans for any sort of setback. Jim Hendry says late April, which means May 1st at the earliest. One setback and we are looking at June 1st. Just another year of being a Cubs fan.

I trust Ted to make it back in the timetable, I think he will do everything he can to ensure his return and will probably put up his usual solid numbers. Still the Cubs probably need to go out and get another starter now. The entire rotation is an injury red flag right now with the exception of Dempster. Zambrano has needed DL stints the past two years, Lilly will start the season on the DL, Randy Wells innings increase last season puts him at risk too.

Jim Hendry simply cannot justify going into the season with just the starters we have now, it is a recipe for disaster and something that I thought would be gone after 2006. It might be as simple as bringing back Rich Harden. It might be more complicated, perhaps only starting pitching should be targeted in a Milton Bradley swap (likely impossible to do). Either way the upcoming season took a decided turn to 2005 with this surgery. Hopefully Hendry finds a way to add another starter and minimize the damage done by missing a month or two of Ted Lilly.



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