Kerry Wood Will Be Back When the Cubs Have Space for Him

It appears that the blister of doom has cleared from the index finger on Kerry Wood's pitching hand and the Cubs' closer is prepared to resume his role in the bullpen of the best team in the National League. The only thing stopping him now is making room on the roster, which will apparently be done by trading Scott Eyre to whoever claims him off waivers. That seems like a massively inefficient way to do things, and Wood and Lou Piniella seem to agree. From the Sun-Times:

''That's something that's got to be figured out,'' Piniella said. ''It's not going to be easy.''

Wood said he's ready to go and lobbied for the chance to be activated Monday.

''It didn't work too well,'' he said. ''Hopefully, we can get it done here in the next couple of days.''

For his part, the story makes it sound like Wood's finger is ready to go and he'll be back in the closer's role after a stint or two in middle relief just to be sure. I can't figure out why they have to wait on moving Eyre when they could demote Sean Marshall or someone for a day or two until things get cleared up, but I don't understand a lot of what Jim Hendry does, beyond the fact that he seems to have found the magical threshold of money spent it takes to contend in the National League.