Adam Wainwright Goes Wrong

The Cardinals got their first look at their Opening Day starter yesterday.  They have to hope that it was his evil twin that showed up.

Actually, Adam Wainwright's outing wasn't all that bad. He had two earned runs in two innings, with a walk and a strikeout. 

Still though, three runs in total and five hits isn't exactly what you want to see from your ace. Yet, it is still early, and Wainwright has plenty of time to shake off the rust and get back to what we expect out of him.

The pitching wasn't great yesterday, but we've seen much worse. Blake Hawksworth gave up three runs in three innings, but it's hard to tell from the box score just how well he pitched. 

The pitchers got betrayed somewhat by Tyler Greene, who had two errors, one of which led to two unearned runs surrendered by Jason Motte, who also struck out two.

Speaking of strikeouts, it was nice to see Trever Miller strike out the side. Having a lefty who can do that could be very useful during the season.

It was a grudge game in some regards, as Miller, of course, pitched for the Rays last year and now was pitching against them, while Adam Kennedy, very recently of the Cardinals, was wearing the green/teal of Tampa Bay and batting leadoff. 

Kennedy, who still isn't real happy with Tony LaRussa, got two base hits off of Wainwright. Probably a little fired up, don't you think?

Offensively, Brian Barton continued to make his presence known with a triple and a stolen base. 

Nick Stavinova came in and got a couple of hits off the bench, and Rick Ankiel had a two-for-three day.

Cards take their 3-2-1 record into today's game against the Mets.  The lineup will be:

Rasmus 8
Mather 5
Pujols 3
Ludwick 9
Duncan 7
K. Greene 6
Craig DH
LaRue 2
Thurston 4

Kyle Lohse takes the mound for the second time this spring, so hopefully we'll see about three innings of one run ball, or at least an improvement on his last outing.

Even though the transcripts aren't going up as regularly as scheduled, the UCB Roundtable is still going on.  Today, we discuss ownership over at Stan Musial's Stance.