Come To Think of It...Why Are Cubs So Secretive with Injuries?

UPDATED 8/11/08 @ 1:30pm CT

Where are the conspiracy theorists when you need them? Hell, this is the kind of stuff Oliver Stone lives for!

I don't care what Big Z says. And after all the Kerry Wood/Mark Prior lying over the years, I don't believe for a second what Jim Hendry or the Cubs' trainers say. I believe what my eyes tell me, and what the experts say. Zambrano is hurting.

It's their own fault - if the Cubs weren't running a CIA operation out of their front office, we could believe what they tell us and go from there. But they haven't earned that trust.

Big Z is probably trying to pitch through the pain for many reasons. He's proud, he's tough, he's set financially and he wants to win now, recognizing that this could be the year.

But we can't win unless he's pitching well. Until Saturday, he could muscle his way through the pain and still pitch well enough to win. But after what we saw yesterday, it's clear he needs to come to grips with the problem and take some more time off.

For, as badly as we need him now, when the playoffs come, assuming we can hang on without him, we'll need him to partner with Harden and Dempster in a three-man rotation, with Lilly as fourth man, if needed.

But subtract Zambrano from the equation, and we're probably on the outside looking in again come November.

No less an expert than Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus appeared on David Kaplan's Sports Central show on WGN radio one day last week and told us that Zambrano's shoulder was hurting.

He said that he and his baseball-scouting experts could tell from things like his arm slot and his declining velocity that he was hurting. And this was before he pitched the worst game of his career.

Steve Stone once said all pitchers pitch in pain, even if they don't admit it. But there's "normal soreness" and there's injury. And I believe Zambrano has an injury for which no one wants to admit to. This is so like the Cubs.

Of course, the Cubs continue to deny anything is wrong with Big Z. Remember during the offseason the reports were that he was having shoulder trouble. The Cubs denied it, and then he eventually went on the DL, with, you guessed it...shoulder trouble!

And Kerry Wood gets sidelined by a blister for an extraordinarily long time and now has a bad back. Rumors are surfacing about this one, too.

Remember the Mark Prior denials? The foggy status reports of towel throwing and flat ground tossing?

Nobody told us that Derrek Lee's wrist was still hurting after he came back from breaking it, yet that's exactly what happened and why it took him so long to get his power stroke back.

But why? What purpose does it serve? Fool the opponent? No use in trying to fool someone when the player is on the sidelines. Who's fooling whom?

Remember, this is the team that employed a trainer who wasn't professionally certified. And when the other trainer exposed him, the tattletale was fired.

Back to Zambrano - I say shut him down before we lose him for the rest of the year. This is not a time for heroes.  Even if he isn't really injured, he'll come back fresh and strong.

Come to think of it, a new hero is born every day. We'll survive. Shut him down. And quit being so damn secretive.