No expectations, no pressure, right? That's where we are with Mark Prior, writes the Sun-Times' Chris De Luca:

Success for Prior these days, though, means simply staying healthy. If he can do that -- and Prior seems to hit a magical stumbling block in Mesa -- then the Cubs will consider the next step, with no guarantees beyond another test on the mound.

And in Prior's world, where he has faced nothing but expectations and pressure -- real or imagined -- this might be the best situation he has faced.

We've gone from a situation where this appeared to be Prior's team, even with the presence of Sammy Sosa, to Prior almost being an afterthought. He was Robo-Prior. Now he is the textbook example of unreliability. In March 2006, I wrote, "The Cubs' attitude must be that they cannot count on Prior and that they're good enough to win anyway. We're going to go through this every spring with Prior. When he's healthy, Prior is the best the Cubs have (Zambrano moves ahead because of endurance). When he's not healthy, other pitchers have to use the opportunity given to them to shine."

It appears that the team now understands that it cannot rely on Prior. De Luca quotes Larry Rothschild as saying, "[T]here are a lot of hurdles for him to get over healthwise. Hopefully he can do it, and I wouldn't be surprised if he could do it, but I'm certainly not going to be surprised if it doesn't work out. I don't want to be caught surprised if it doesn't work out."

De Luca also addresses the Prior is soft angle:

And the whispers have grown louder with each injury that Prior is too soft to take the rigors of being a major-league pitcher. Scouts scoff at how he seems overly protective of his prized arm. People he shared the clubhouse with whispered the same cutting critique -- a crude variation for being soft.

Rothschild rejects that label, noting Prior's performance down the stretch in 2003. It's also a difficult label to apply to someone you don't know, and, for that reason, those of us who don't know him should avoid speculative criticism.