What's Wrong With Wainwright?

If there was one constant expected in this 2009 season, it was that Adam Wainwright would be the rock of the rotation.  He'd stop the losing streaks, give a solid outing every time out, and generally be the joy of the rotation.  After six starts this year, though, he's not quite been there.  The question is, why not?

I don't have any answers to that, but I wanted to see if it really has been that bad.  I mean, Wainwright did go into last night's game with a 3-0 record and a 2.76 ERA.  What more can you expect out of him, huh?

Still, watching him, you know there's been problems.  He's walked 20 batters this year against only 30 strikeouts.  Batters are hitting him for a .274 average and reaching base 36 percent of the time.  Some of his problems might come from the fact he has a .327 BABIP, but that's not extremely high.

For comparison's sake, in his first six starts of 2008, he was also 3-1, but he had a 2.60 ERA, a BA against of .207, and an OBP against of .256.  Even if you mark that down to a fast start, you wouldn't expect the numbers to increase as much as they have.

Another way to look at it is game scores.  A Bill James invention, game scores are used to note how dominant a pitcher is.  Last year in the span we are talking about, Wainwright had only one game score that was under 60, and that was a 51.  This year, Wainwright has only hit 60 twice (exactly 60, even, not over it) and has three starts that were below 50, including last night's 29.

On Twitter last night, Matthew Leach opined that he liked this start more than some of Wainwright's other, nominally more successful starts because he didn't walk batters.  He did only walk two, including a unintentional-intentional pass to Ryan Howard with two outs in the fifth which was completely justifiable, if moot when the next batter, Jayson Werth, went yard to land another punch on the Cards' comeback.  If he's going to throw strikes (something I believe we all want to see), they definitely need to be better than the ones he threw last night.

Last night's game felt like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill.  Just when the Cards would look like they were coming back, the pitching staff would give up more runs and make the boulder roll back down.  When they were able to rally to 4-3 after home runs by hero Ryan Ludwick and Yadier Molina, I thought they had a chance, but those hopes were pretty much dashed by Werth's blast.

So the Cardinals finally lose their 10th game of the season and have now lost three in a row with Pittsburgh coming in tonight.  Mitchell Boggs goes up against Zach Duke.

The Pirates haven't seen Boggs before (well, Brandon Moss has, but that's it), but the Cardinals are well acquainted with Duke.  I believe he will be the first pitcher St. Louis has seen twice in 2009, as he gave up three runs (one earned) in six-and-two-thirds innings in the season-opening series, getting a 7-4 win against Todd Wellemeyer. 

In his career, he's struggled some against the Cardinals, though he's usually kept them in the yard.  Duke seems to have recaptured some of that promise that he had early in his career, as he sports a 2.21 ERA coming into tonight's game.

Various other things.  It looks like Rick Ankiel won't be out for an extended period of time.  Thank goodness that crash didn't happen at Wrigley, because I'm thinking the padding was better on Ankiel's head than bricks would have been.  While he's OK now, as it happened, Ankiel wasn't quite as sanguine about what was going on.

Krylon is running a sports trivia contest and the winner gets tickets to the World Series.  Head over here and try your luck!

Jay from Riding the Pine hasn't done a lot of blogging lately, but did want me to mention that he's got a forum for St. Louis autograph hunters, no matter the sport.  If that's one of your interests, head on over there and see if you can make some connections.

Finally, it's Wednesday, and you know that means UCB Radio Hour.  I'll be hosting it tonight as most of the regulars are out of pocket, so tune in and call in with questions or comments to try to keep the dead air to a minimum.  Tonight's featured blog is Baseball Digest and we'll be talking to Andrea at the top of the show.  Hope to see you there!