Though injuries greatly shortened what was an incredibly promising career, 2003 provided a full-season glimpse of what Mark Prior was capable of on the mound.
Despite having not won a World Series since 1908 and having not even been to a Fall Classic since 1945, the North Side of Chicago was rife with optimism in the early 2000’s.
After narrowly missing out on the playoffs in 2001, the Chicago Cubs appeared to be in excellent shape for building a competitive team in the near-future. Anchored by an elite farm system with top prospects such as Corey Patterson, Carlos Zambrano and Mark Prior along with a good roster of existing talent that included Kerry Wood and Sammy Sosa, the tools appeared to be there for a good team.
Although the 2002 season was a trainwreck from a team standpoint, the bright spots were still there for the Cubs – perhaps none more conspicuous than the effort put forth by Mark Prior in his somewhat abbreviated rookie campaign.
Debuting at the age of 21, Prior went on to compile a 6-6 record with a 3.32 ERA across 19 starts in 2002, posting 38 walks alongside 147 strikeouts, good enough to finish seventh in that year’s NL Rookie of the Year voting.
Prior’s strong performance in 2002 made him a trusted piece of the 2003 Cubs rotation, a team that would get several boosts in the offseason that would drastically change the fortunes of what was a 67-95 ballclub.
After parting ways with manager Don Baylor midway through 2002, the Cubs hired Dusty Baker away from the 2002 NL champion San Francisco Giants to be their manager, while also adding names like Damian Miller, Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek into the fold.
While the slightly more seasoned 26-year-old Kerry Wood entered the season as the Cubs ace, there were high expectations for both Prior and Zambrano, a pair of 22-year-olds who were both viewed to be long-term stalwarts of Cubs rotations of the future.
Prior ultimately slotted in as the third starter to begin the season behind Wood and veteran Matt Clement, with Prior putting together a quality six-inning outing with one earned run allowed and seven strikeouts in what was a 6-3 win over the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.
It wouldn’t take long for Prior to add more fuel to the fire of expectations, tossing a complete game shutout in his second start of the season against the Montreal Expos at Wrigley Field, allowing just four hits with no walks and 12 strikeouts in what was the best performance of his career up to that point.
The 22-year-old went on to finish April with a 4-1 record and 1.70 ERA across his first five starts, which included another nine-inning outing in Pittsburgh on April 19, as well as a win in Colorado on April 25 that saw Prior hit his first and only career home run.
Although May would include what was Prior’s worst start of the season, when he was tagged for six earned runs in 6.2 innings of work in Houston on May 23, the young starter picked up another couple of wins while showcasing excellent durability – throwing 105 or more pitches in five of his six starts that month.
Prior picked up another pair of wins in June – one of which came in a highly-anticipated Sunday Night Baseball matchup against the New York Yankees at Wrigley Field where he successfully outdueled veteran Andy Pettitte.
The young righty added on to this 10-strikeout performance with an eight-inning, 16-strikeout showing against the Milwaukee Brewers on June 26 – a game the Cubs ultimately lost 5-3. Despite the loss, Prior had maneuvered through the first three months of the year with a 8-3 record and 2.61 ERA – good enough to earn himself a ticket to Chicago’s South Side for the 2003 All-Star Game.
While energy was sky-high in Chicago as the Cubs were clearly in the mix as a playoff contender when the calendar flipped to July, Prior sustained what at first looked to be a minor injury that only kept him out of action for a few weeks.
According to Prior himself, however, the injury was career-altering.
During the second inning of a game against the Atlanta Braves at Wrigley Field on July 11, Prior collided with Braves second baseman Marcus Giles while running from first to second base, sending Prior toppling over Giles while causing Giles to sustain a concussion himself.
Prior landed awkwardly on his shoulder, but would go on to pitch a couple more innings in that game before missing a handful of starts nursing the injury.
In 2016, a decade after Mark Prior threw his final pitch in the big leagues, the former Cubs ace penned an emotional post in Sports Illustrated, looking back on his short, brilliant MLB career. In the post, Prior himself cites his collision with Giles in July 2003, along with a broken elbow sustained on a comebacker hit by Brad Hawpe of the Colorado Rockies in 2005, as major injuries that greatly affected his ability to continue playing baseball.
In the post, Prior makes it clear that he does not believe Dusty Baker should be blamed for his heavy usage of Prior, believing the injuries he sustained had a larger impact on his health throughout his career.
With that said though, it is worth taking a deeper look into just how much Prior was used by the Cubs down the stretch in 2003, with the 22-year-old sophomore being leaned on like a 36-year-old Jack Morris was for the 1991 Minnesota Twins.
From a glimpse at season’s end, Prior’s season was absolutely spectacular by every metric. He led all NL pitchers with 7.4 WAR, posted an 18-6 record with a 2.43 ERA and finished the year with 50 walks and 243 strikeouts in 211.1 innings across 30 starts.
That last tidbit probably tells some of the story to those reading this that are big baseball dorks – pitchers nowadays struggle greatly to reach 200 innings across 33 or 34 starts, speaking to the old-school approach that Baker employed throughout 2003.
Mark Prior had eight games with 10 or more strikeouts in 2003, but that came with a hefty toll on Prior’s arm. The young starter hurled at least 100 pitches in 26 of his 30 starts, while he threw at least 111 pitches on 19 separate occasions – something that is absolutely unheard of in today’s league, especially for a 22-year-old pitcher.
As the season went on and Prior began to emerge as the team’s No. 1 starter, Baker leaned on the young righty even more. Across six starts in September, Prior tossed an unprecedented 757 pitches, including three outings of more than 130 pitches. Despite not having weathered anywhere near that workload before in his career, Prior was being treated like a seasoned ace with 15 years in the league.
Even with the injury that Prior himself said helped doom his career in July, the young starter was still an absolute juggernaut for opponents in the second half of 2003. Prior’s rampage through NL offenses included a stretch of seven consecutive wins from Aug. 5 to Sept. 6 – with back-to-back complete games against the Los Angeles Dodgers sandwiched in that timeframe.
Prior went on to compile a 5-1 record in September, hitting a particularly impressive stride in his final three starts of the regular season – allowing just five walks alongside 37 strikeouts in 23 innings of work.
The Cubs were ultimately rewarded for how much they leaned on their young ace, barely edging out the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals for the NL Central crown with an 88-74 record , sending the North Siders to the postseason for the first time since 1998.
I’m not going to get too deep into the demise of the 2003 Cubs, especially after hurting myself with a detailed look at the heartbreaking 2004 Cubs that collapsed and missed the playoffs. But it worth noting that Prior himself certainly couldn’t be to blame for the Cubs’ demise, even if he was on the mound as the collapse began in the eighth inning of NLCS Game 6.
Prior continued his excellency in the postseason, going 2-1 across three starts that included a complete game victory over the Braves in Game 3 of the NLDS. Though Prior allowed just 16 hits in 23.1 innings with 18 strikeouts, he also walked nine batters – perhaps an indication that his heavily taxed arm was beginning to run out of gas.
After the Cubs’ brutal elimination in Game 7 of the NLCS at the hands of the Florida Marlins, things never really returned to normal for Mark Prior. He missed a good chunk of 2004 with an achilles injury, posting a 4.02 ERA across 21 starts with a 6-4 record for a team that fell out of contention during the last week of the season.
His aforementioned injury in 2005 put a damper into what was a very solid bounceback campaign for Prior, who finished the year with an 11-7 record and 3.67 ERA, possessing an MLB-best 10.2 strikeouts-per-nine innings.
The following season marked the end of Prior’s big-league career, despite efforts to return to MLB lasting all the way until 2013. Of course, Prior has put together an incredibly meaningful second act to his baseball career, having been a coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers since 2018 and their pitching coach since 2020 – which has made Prior a three-time World Series champion.
For most baseball fans, a look back on Mark Prior’s 2003 campaign is the revisiting of a cautionary tale – how a young arm can fall apart with overuse and unlucky injury.
Growing up, I was always convinced that Dusty Baker had ruined the arms of both Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, an opinion I’m not so sure I hold on to today. While I do believe Baker relied on Prior far too much down the stretch in 2003, I also think those were decisions made by a manager who wanted to win at any cost – who viewed 2003 as an excellent opportunity to finally break the curse.
For a team with a solid, but generally unpredictable bullpen, leaning heavily on the starters felt like the best shot at stacking up wins – and for much of the season, it was.
We’ll never know if Mark Prior would have gone on to have a long, fruitful MLB career had he never sustained those injuries, or if the heavy toll on his arm in 2003 really was the catalyst for the host of issues Prior dealt with for the rest of his career.
But here’s one thing I can say with confidence. In a league where pitchers throw harder and nastier stuff than they ever have before, injuries and Tommy John surgeries remain as rampant and prevalent as ever at all levels of baseball, trickling down to high school juniors who are already having their UCLs reconstructed.
Despite a leaguewide consensus on limiting pitch counts around the 100-pitch mark, arms have not been saved. From Gerrit Cole and Corbin Burnes to Max Fried and Sandy Alcantara, just about all of the sport’s dominant pitchers have missed significant time due to arm injuries – and they were not throwing 125 pitches a game.
With injuries among pitchers seemingly as widespread as they’ve ever been, fans are left waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to young talents like Paul Skenes and Jacob Misiorowski – and a high pitch count won’t be there to blame when and if they sustain a serious injury.
So instead of obsessing over Mark Prior’s 2003 season as this cautionary tale, it should be celebrated as an incredible single-season performance that helped propel a 21-win year-to-year improvement for a team that came within five outs of making it to the World Series – completely regardless of whatever happened afterwards.
Leave a Reply