(Cubs SS Nefi Perez ushers in the era of trashing Nomar’s rep with a 2nd inning HR off Dave Williams)
We’ll know for sure in another six days if Kerry Wood can’t make his next scheduled start Saturday in Houston.
Right now, plans are for him to start.
But Wood is back to nursing tendinitis in his valuable right shoulder. That didn’t stop him from going five innings Sunday in a 5-2 Cubs victory over the Pirates. But it did keep him from going further despite throwing only 76 pitches.
“There’s nothing wrong with him, he just has a little tendinitis,” Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. “We thought it best, to calm it down, to throw a designated amount of innings. We think he’s OK, doctors think he’s OK. He’s still kind of in spring training (conditioning-wise) and that happens a lot.”
In real spring training, Wood was limited to three official games and nine innings because of the same tightness in the same area, which forced him back to Chicago for tests.
The soreness “was gone for a while. It was just a little cranky [Sunday],” Wood said. “It was the coldest day I pitched in so far this year and we made the decision [five innings] was enough and to get ready for my next one in five or six days.”
So he’ll make his next start Saturday?
“Yeah, we hope so,” Baker said. “We think so.”
Will his pitches be limited again?
“It all depends on how it calms down between now and then,” Baker said. “We’re just trying to get it calmed down and get rid of it completely. There’s always something with everybody, it’s just a matter to what degree.”
The only way Dusty can end baseless speculation as to the source of Wood’s arm woes is by hinting to Bob Ryan that Kerry’s been looking awfully muscular lately.