Cardinals Need Vintage Effort from Struggling Adam Wainwright to Save Season

Under normal circumstances, turning to staff ace Adam Wainwright to save their season would be the ideal scenario for the St. Louis Cardinals.

The circumstances the Cardinals are facing right now, however, are not normal. Wainwright is still the Cardinals' ace by reputation, but it's not so much by performance these days. For the Cardinals' season to survive beyond Thursday, that will have to change. 

Wainwright's task will be to take the mound at AT&T Park for Game 5 of the National League Championship series and rescue the Cardinals from the 3-1 hole the San Francisco Giants have put them in. The latest blow came in Wednesday night's Game 4, when the Giants erased a 4-1 deficit to win 6-4.

There's no need to tell Wainwright what he's up against. He understands that he's looking at a chance to add a gold star to his postseason resume.

"You know, until last year's NLCS, I was undefeated in the postseason, and I just don't want to get a bad rap for not being a good playoff pitcher," he told MLB.com's Adam McCalvy. "That's the time I want to shine the most. That's the time that every pitcher wants to shine the most. I know I'm capable of doing that." 

Wainwright's track record confirms that he is indeed capable of shining in Game 5. He's coming off a regular season in which he posted a career-best 2.38 ERA, and he entered this postseason with a career 2.53 ERA in October.

Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

But anyone who's been watching will know that Wainwright's October ERA has since gone up a bit. In the two starts he's made so far, he simply hasn't been himself.

It started with him allowing six earned runs on 11 hits in 4.1 innings against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. To date, that's his worst postseason start.

More recently, the Giants got to Wainwright for six hits, three walks and three runs (two earned) in 4.2 innings in Game 1 of the NLCS. He didn't get much help from his defense, granted, but that excuse only goes so far in light of how Wainwright himself wasn't especially sharp.

So suddenly, Wainwright has been very un-Wainwright. The popular narrative, of course, is that his elbow's health is to blame.

On the eve of the NLCS, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Wainwright's status for Game 1 was somewhat up in the air due to the discomfort in his elbow that he'd been pitching through for months.

Via ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney, Wainwright called the issue "overblown." But after struggling his way through Game 1, he stated to Stan McNeal of Fox Sports Midwest that his elbow is "not 100 percent."

But Wainwright also said that his bigger problem was his mechanics, in that he was "dramatically late" in getting the ball out of his glove. And when that happens, this happens: "That doesn't allow your arm to have time to get into the proper position to throw the ball. My stride length is about a foot shorter than it should be, so it's not getting my arm enough time to get where it needs to be," he said.

The good news, according to ESPN's Jayson Stark, is that at least that part has been fixed:

To be sure, this doesn't mean that Wainwright's balky elbow has been miraculously cured. But for those looking for reasons to be optimistic, the 33-year-old veteran might actually need improved mechanics more than he needs a 100 percent healthy elbow.

Velocity is one thing you tend to see go away when pitchers are really hurting. Based on these figures from Brooks Baseball, Wainwright wasn't hurting too badly in his two postseason starts:

Split	Four-Seam	Sinker	Cutter	Curveball
Regular Season	91.12	91.04	87.21	75.31
Postseason	91.35	91.60	88.02	77.20

Rather than stuff, Wainwright's bigger problem has been command. After throwing 66 percent strikes in the regular season, he's thrown only 63 percent strikes in the postseason.

The eye test says that unusually poor fastball command played a big role in that. The data agrees, as the zone profile for Wainwright's hard stuff practically screams "ALL OVER THE PLACE!"

Credit: Brooks Baseball (h/t Baseball Prospectus)

This doesn't look anywhere near as clean as Wainwright's regular-season fastball zone profile, indicating that, yeah, maybe his mechanics really were that out of whack.

If his mechanics are once again in whack, then Wainwright may have no problems with his command in Game 5. And if he's once again able to have the same life on his pitches, despite his balky elbow, then he'll be featuring the combination of stuff and command that has made him such a great pitcher.

Such is the Cardinals' hope, anyway. Because if anything less than vintage Wainwright shows up on Thursday, they'll be in trouble.

The big reason why?

This guy, of course:

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

That's Giants ace Madison Bumgarner. He'll be on the mound opposite Wainwright in Game 5, and the thing about him is that he's been kinda awesome so far in the postseason.

In three starts, the 25-year-old southpaw has pitched to a 0.76 ERA and limited opponents to a .156 average in 23.2 innings, with 23 strikeouts to boot. He was last seen dominating the Cardinals with 7.2 shutout innings in Game 1 of the NLCS.

The way Bumgarner is pitching, the Cardinals simply can't have Wainwright struggling like he did in Game 1 of the NLDS and Game 1 of the NLCS. That would likely mean at least a couple of runs on the board for the Giants, and a couple of runs is more than Bumgarner needs.

The situation is further complicated by the state of the Cardinals bullpen.

Because Shelby Miller could only last 3.2 innings in Game 4, five different Cardinals relievers were forced to pick up 4.1 innings of slack. And with four of the five—Marco Gonzales, Seth Maness, Randy Choate and Pat Neshek—having also pitched in Game 3, Cardinals skipper Mike Matheny won't quite have a bullpen loaded with fresh arms for Game 5.

That's Wainwright's invitation to do what he does as well as anyone when he's on: pitch deep into games and rack up plenty of goose eggs along the way.

If he can't do that, it's more than likely a fork will be stuck in the 2014 Cardinals. The Wainwright they've seen so far this postseason is a very hittable pitcher, and that pitcher will make things all too easy for the red-hot Bumgarner if he shows his face again.

The only guy who can match wits with Bumgarner is the real Adam Wainwright. That's the Wainwright the Cardinals will need to show up, with the prize being a Game 6 and, potentially, a Game 7 back in St. Louis.

It's a job for an ace. What the Cardinals are going to find out is if they still have one.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.  

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