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In November, Greg Johns gave us this prognosis on Stephen Pryor:

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Pryor ... had triceps surgery in August after a season-long struggle with his arm and latissimus dorsi muscle behind his right shoulder. Zduriencik said the young reliever is expected to begin throwing in January and should be able to participate to some degree in Spring Training, though it's premature to say whether he has a chance yet to be ready by Opening Day.

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SSI chooses to read that as:  normally, you'd expect Pryor to be fine for March, but it's been a series of muscle tears, so we're not taking anything for granted with this kid...

What is Dr. D's reaction to the idea of "injury prone"?  In general terms, if you've got a Jacoby Ellsbury going through fractured ribs, shoulder dislocations, etc., you don't have to worry about him any more than any other player.  This is the way that James and the Red Sox look at it, too, as discussed at BJOL.  (Apparently the New York Yankees won't argue too hard with that.)

You could say that Pryor's muscle injuries are all related to his throwing motion ... then again, you could say that Jacoby Ellsbury has a tendency to land on the wrong foot the wrong way, has a tendency to twist and bend things the wrong way, etc.  How often did Ichiro ever slide into second base and sprain his ankle?

There are a lot of big hurkin' guys like Pryor who throw 97 MPH.

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SSI Archives

Here is a tag to everything we wrote about Pryor the last two years.  Most notably, Pryor has a ridiculous "hop" to his way-overhand fastball.  This awesome pitch shape may result in a bread-and-butter weapon like the one Mariano Rivera used to dominate for 20 years.  (Yes, LrKrBoi29, we know there is only one Mo.)

Pryor is a lot more than one more flashy young bullpen arm.  He's got a game that translates to MLB(TM) baseball.  I'll give you three Danny Farquhars, Charlie Furbushes and Tom Wilhelmsens for one (healthy) Stephen Pryor.  Underneath the marble block, THIS kid is the one that could house the David underneath.

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BaseballHQ

Ronnie's take on Pryor was interesting:

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High-octane bullpen arm derailed by ... (injury problems).  ... He's got the tools to become a dominant late-inning reliever.  Just 50 IP in high minors, so he needs more seasoning.  A great $1 stash in deep keeper leagues.

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Pryor was ALREADY so impressive that it was easy to lose sight of the fact that he was, as Ron points out, not ready.  I mean, he was ready in the sense that he helped the club, but he was ready in the sense that Kobe was ready to score 19 points a game at age 20.

Pryor's slider was vestigal, his command was spotty, his game management and acclimation were zero ... and with all this, his sheer stuff overcame the fact that he didn't know what he was doing.  See Walker, Taijuan.

Gordon, or Dr. Grumpy, could maybe speak to his health prognosis for 2014.  He was shut down very early in 2014, and has been under (presumably) state-of-the-art medical attention.  Even though he hasn't pitched, he has processed a lot of the lessons learned; he's been a major leaguer for almost two years, has had a lot of time to think about how to get batters out.

Pryor is raw, but it's not unusual for young bullpen arms to dominate early.  He'll be one of the top five or six items on the watch list in March.

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