Results tagged ‘ Adam Wainwright ’

Winter Warm-Up tidbits: All Wainwright edition

We’re going to have a massive amount of Adam Wainwright on the site today, and something tells me that’s not a problem with any of you folks. Jenifer will be writing a feature on him as well as a note in the notebook about his comments on Tim Tebow (spoiler: he’s a fan). In the meantime, a few tidbits from his session with us this afternoon…

 

* On his elbow: “My arm feels great. My arm feels really good. I had a side [session] on Thursday. It went great, and I’ll continue to throw till Spring Training. I’m actually kind of worried that I’m too far along, as opposed to the other way around.”

* On the team monitoring his workload and perhaps reining him in at times: “We’ll have to wait and see. I’m not sure. I’m going to feel fresh and ready to go, and they’re probably going to pull the reins on me a little bit in the beginning. We’ll just have to wait and see. if I’m throwing low-impact innings, throwing 80 pitches in eight innings, stuff like that, then you can go a lot longer than if you’re out there grinding throwing 120, 130 pitches.”

* On a projected innings count of 150-180: “150 innings sounds like half a season to me. that’s five innings for 30 starts. If I’m making all my starts, I just don’t see how that would be possible. But he is the boss, so at the end of the day you defer to him. but any pitcher that is out there competing their tail off and is decent at what they do should throw more than 150 innings, I think.”

* On Albert Pujols: “As a teammate of Albert, you want him to come back. As a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, more than just a player for the Cardinals, you understand why making a huge commitment, a $300 million commitment, is just potential suicide. But you also know it would be worth it if Albert is Albert. I don’t think either side was wrong. I think it’s business. Of course you want to see a guy like that, who means so much to a franchise, finish here. but the nature of the game today is there’s just so many things that happen that we don’t want to happen.”

* On whether the club has approached him about a new deal (Wainwright is signed through 2013): “Not close. I haven’t heard anything about it and I probably won’t until they see that I’m healthy and out there rolling. Now if I go out there rolling, they better get going quick. But of course I want to finish my career here. everybody knows that. everybody that plays here wants to finish their career here. I can’t remember very many guys wanting to leave. This is St. Louis. People call it baseball heaven. Well, you know what? we kind of have it like that. we’re very blessed to have it in St. Louis. It would definitely be invited from my side of it.”

(Btw, the “they better get going quick” was said good-naturedly, and not as any kind of threat. Trust me. I was there.)

 

-M.

Monday tidbits: Lynn, Wainwright, and… a surprise?

Greetings from Houston, where it’s sweltering hot outside but comfortably air conditioned inside. It’s Star Wars Night at Minute Maid Park, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit curious to see how all that turns out.

Shameless plug: As of now, I’m scheduled to be back on MLB Network’s “The Rundown” again tomorrow afternoon. Subject to change, but looks likely. Usually it’s 2-3 segments between 2 and 4 p.m. CT, talking Cardinals.

As for the tidbits…

* Lance Lynn threw to hitters today for the first time since he was injured. He felt good and he looked pretty good from my seat in the press box.

However, it’s almost completely certain that this IS the endgame for Lynn. He can’t, by rule, be activated before the regular season ends, because he pitched on Aug. 9 and was placed on the 60-day disabled list.  He could, by RULE, be activated for the NLCS if the Cardinals got there. But from various people I talked to today, that’s about a zero percent chance. They’re happy he’s gotten this far, and the focus is on making sure he’s healthy for 2012.

* Adam Wainwright continues progressing. He threw 40 pitches off a mound today, estimating that he was throwing at about 75 miles per hour. He’s still only throwing fastballs, not even changeups — never mind breaking balls. So even more than Lynn, there’s just no way he’s going to throw any competitive innings this year.

* Though Jason Motte has pitched each of the past two days and four out of five, TLR said Motte should be available tonight.

* TLR said that Dave Duncan may fly down to Houston on Wednesday to make a brief visit to the team. It’s uncertain whether he would be around if the Cardinals play beyond Wednesday.

* At the end of his pregame session today, TLR was asked if there was any way his starting rotation plans for this series could changed. He allowed that there is one scenario where they might. Asked if that scenario is a GOOD scenario, he granted that it is.

Asked one more followup, whether that good scenario is one that we have seen before, he said, “no commento.”

So, in short: he’s not going to go into details until it’s a reality. BUT it does seem there’s a possibility that if the Cardinals gain ground on the Braves today and tomorrow, then Wednesday’s starter could change. That is, if they’re actually UP by a game going into Wednesday, it’s conceivable that Carpenter would be held back from that game.

Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense, and it’s what I’d do if I were in the manager’s shoes, IF that situation comes up. If you do it, and you still have to go to a one-game playoff, Carpenter is available to pitch that game. And IF they make the playoffs, it wouldn’t matter whether Carpenter’s last regular-season game was Wednesday or Thursday. Either way, he’d be available for Game 3, and no sooner.

Again, TLR didn’t lay this all out himself. But it’s not all that difficult to put the pieces together and figure it out.

And, finally, the playlist…

The Horrible Crowes, “Behold the Hurricane”
Buffalo Tom, “Paper Knife”
Jason Isbell, “We’ve Met”
Greg Allman, “Just Another Rider”
Manchester Orchestra, “Simple Math”

-M.

Club confirms Wainwright surgery

Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak announced Thursday morning that, as expected, ace Adam Wainwright will require reconstructive elbow surgery.
Wainwright, 29, will undergo “Tommy John” surgery to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. The typical recovery time for a starting pitcher who undergoes the operation is roughly 12-15 months. 
The club had expected that Wainwright would need the surgery after the pitcher consulted with Dr. George Paletta, the team’s head physician, on Wednesday. A second opinion from Dr. Lewis Yocum confirmed Paletta’s findings. Yocum notified Mozeliak of his opinion on Wednesday evening.
“It’s not a real surprise to us this morning,” Mozeliak said, “but certainly a disappointment and a finality to this process.”
A date for the surgery has not been determined, but Paletta will perform the operation.

Tuesday tidbits from Disneyburg

Greetings from a busy day 2 of the GM Meetings. I’ve had Winter Meetings days that were far slower than this one.

A few tidbits from the day:
* I asked John Mozeliak about the Albert Pujols negotiations, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch report that the club has a time frame in mind to get something rolling.
His comment: “Obviously Albert is someone that we need to focus on, and in the near future, I will get with his agent Dan Lozano and we will start looking at timing and how to handle the situation.”
* As I noted in the story on Adam Wainwright’s Cy Young finish, Wainwright said that he recently had his right elbow checked out and that it came out clear. Here’s Mozeliak on that topic:
“It was just more precautionary. We just wanted to make sure that how he ended the season, there weren’t any lingering effects. And it was all positive.”
* A couple of other things from talking to Mozeliak after the Jake Westbrook announcement. He said that there’s no one next priority for the club, that comes ahead of all the rest. He also said that the Cardinals maintain interest in adding a sixth starter for depth. 
* However, Bartolo Colon will not be that starter. The club has no interest in Colon at this point.
* Additionally, I wrote this on Twitter, but I wanted to get it in here too: The Westbrook deal is, to my eye, simply an outstanding one for the club. He’s a quality pitcher who should rack up innings, and the going rate for those guys is three years and at least the dollars per year that Westbrook got.
I’m not crazy about the blanket no-trade, but it’s only a two-year contract, so the risk is less than on a longer deal. Overall, though, the dollars are reasonable, and getting a pitcher like this on a deal of less than three years looks very good to me. A nice move.
* And, finally, the playlist. In honor of the release of the mega-box-set of Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town, my five favorite songs from that album:
“Badlands”
“Something in the Night”
“Candy’s Room”
“The Promised Land”
“Prove It All Night”
-M.

Waino on his contract, his elbow and Westbrook

Shortly after the announcement of the Cy Young results, Adam Wainwright hopped on a mini-conference call with a couple of us St. Louis scribes who are down here at the GM Meetings. The first version of the Cy Young story is on the site now, and you can check it out at this link. I’ll be fleshing it out later, as well.
In the meantime, though, I wanted to pass along a couple of non-Cy Young topics that he addressed.
By finishing in the top-5 in the balloting, Wainwright took a major step toward guaranteeing his vesting contract options for 2012 and 2013. If he does not finish the 2011 season on the disabled list, the options will be guaranteed, and Wainwright will make $9 million in 2012 and $12 million in 2013. If the options do not automatically vest, the club still has the choice of exercising them for the total amount or declining them, with no buyout cost. Additionally, if he WINS the 2011 Cy Young, his base pay in 2012 would bump up to $10 million.
Here’s what he had to say about the contract:
“I am really excited to be a St. Louis Cardinal for three more years, at this moment. I hope to one day finish my career in St. Louis. So three more years obviously is something I can really get excited about. My family loves it there. They have great schools. The Cardinal fan base has really embraced us and my family as well. Plus there’s some pretty good barbecue up there. I’m always proud to be a St. Louis Cardinal, and three more years, hopefully it’s three more years in the span of a lot more years after that.”
Additionally, Wainwright said that he had a follow-up exam on the elbow discomfort  that bothered him at the end of 2010, and that everything checked out well.
“It [an MRI exam] has taken place,” he said. “Everything came out crystal-clear. My arm is in perfect health. The strained muscle in my elbow is completely healed, and the nerve inflammation is gone. I’ve been looking at working as hard as I possibly can and getting ready for next season already, just doing my normal offseason workout. You can tell everybody that I’m fine and ready to play.”
Finally, he was asked if he had heard anything about what’s up with his friend and fellow Georgian Jake Westbrook.
“He always plays it real… I can’t ever get an answer out of Jake,” Wainwright said. “I think he’s got strict orders from his agent to not do that. So when I ask him about it, he always says, ‘Hey, just be patient, I’m trying to get things worked out.’”
-M.

Stats of the day, August 24

As you might expect, the clubhouse wasn’t too chatty tonight, so no Note of the Night for you. Instead, hopefully the stats are tasty enough to tide you over. And as you might expect, I’ll be following this entry with a Chess Match.

Stat of the Day, 1: Adam Wainwright has a 5.51 ERA for his career at PNC Park. Yet Tuesday was the first time he had lost here in 10 games, eight of them starts. He had been 5-0 in Pittsburgh. He still has allowed only one homer at PNC in 50 2/3 innings.
Stat of the Day, 2: The Cardinals are tied with the Brewers for the second-best team OBP in the National League. They’re also now fifth in runs per game.
Stat of the Day, 3: Albert Pujols’ next double will be his 30th of the season. That will make him, according to Baseball-Reference.com, the third player in Major League history with at least 10 seasons of 30-plus home runs and 30-plus doubles. Not the third with 10 consecutive. The third to do it 10 times ever in his career. Admittedly, this says something about the era, since the other two players to do it are Manny Ramirez and Carlos Delgado. But even so, Pujols will be 10-for-10, while no one else in the history of the game has done it more than 10 times in total.
Stat of the Day, 4: Pujols’ OPS for August is 1.353. If he were to finish the month with that high a mark, it would be the second-highest for any month in his career, behind only April of 2006 (346/509/914, for a 1.423 OPS).

Fun with double situational splits: This Pujols fellow, he’s pretty good. In night games in August this year, he’s 28-for-56 (.500) with 11 extra-base hits for a .946 slugging percentage, and five walks for a .541 on-base percentage.

And, finally, the playlist:
I’ve been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones today, but stuff from outside the “canon.” So here are five favorites from less-heralded Stones albums.
“Connection” (from Between the Buttons)
“She’s So Cold” (from Emotional Rescue)
“Crazy Mama” (from Black and Blue)
“Too Tight” (from Bridges to Babylon)
“Almost Hear You Sigh” (from Steel Wheels)
-M.

Note of the night/Stat of the day, August 11

So… that was an entertaining series, eh?

Note of the night: Matt Holliday did not return to Wednesday’s game after the rain delay. He was feeling some groin tightness, and the club decided it would have been unwise to push him on a very wet field.
“During the rain delay, he got something,” TLR said. “He wanted to go back out there, and then we saw the splashes and decided not to risk it. His legs were really getting tight.”
Holliday seemed entirely unconcerned about it, and said that he expects to play on Friday at home against the Cubs.
“With the wetness, it’s not smart to go out there and slip around,” he said.
Stat of the day: Over his last nine starts, Adam Wainwright is 7-1 with a 1.14 ERA, 51 strikeouts and 13 walks. In his last 12 starts, he has allowed no earned runs eight times.
Fun with double situational splits: Holliday is batting .370 with a .469 on-base percentage and a .630 slugging percentage with runners in scoring position since the All-Star break.
And, finally, the playlist:
Stone Roses, “Fools Gold”
Cure, “Never Enough”
New Order, “Shellshock”
Sisters of Mercy, “This Corrosion”
Nine Inch Nails, “Sin”
-M.

Note of the night/Stat of the day, May 30

Note of the night: You’ve got a game story centered on Albert Pujols. You’ve got a sidebar story on Albert Pujols. How about a note of the night on Albert Pujols?

When Pujols goes deep three times, then talks for 15 minutes afterward, you better believe you’re going to get a lot of Pujols on this blog and site, and from everyone else who covered it. And this afternoon, Pujols was engaging, thoughtful, funny — one of the better interviews he’s given in recent memory.
Even though Pujols was frustrated by the questions and speculation about his less-productive May, he acknowledged that by his own standards he’s been struggling. But he said he’s feeling good physically, and strongly downplayed any issues regarding his right knee, which he tweaked a few weeks ago. 
“I’m still in the lineup and playing every day,” he said, when asked if he was healthy. “I told you guys in Spring Training, I told you guys early in the year. You never play this game 100 percent. Every day something bothers you. it could be a hamstring, it could be a shoulder, anything. It’s hard to play this game 100 percent. Not even the first game of Spring Training.
“I just don’t like when people try to figure out what’s going on with me. Maybe I’m struggling at the plate and hitting .305. Maybe because I haven’t hit a home run in so many at-bats, people try to figure out that.”
It’s worth noting that I haven’t seen any kind of wrap on Pujols’ knee in recent days, and that’s something he would have if he’d been getting treatment on it.
As for whether he was worried about his production, the answer is pretty much a no.
“This is my 11th season as a professional athlete, and I know what I’m capable of doing,” he said. “I believe that [God] has blessed me with this great career, and all of a sudden it’s not going to go away just because you struggle. You figure out. You find yourself out.
But, again, he didn’t deny that the production hasn’t been there.
“You obviously know when you’re chasing balls out of the strike zone and you’re not patient,” he said. “You feel that. Maybe sometimes you want to push it a little, because you think it’s not going too good. But I don’t think I have felt that this year. Believe it or not.”
Stat of the day 1: Eleven of Pujols’ 12 home runs have come on the road.
Stat of the day 2: From June 1 of last year through the end of May this year, Adam Wainwright has made 34 starts, going 21-8 with a 2.29 ERA. He has 230 strikeouts and 59 walks in that span. In 23 of those 34 starts, he’s gone at least seven innings with no more than two earned runs.
Fun with double situational splits: Skip Schumaker is batting .289 with a .372 on-base percentage at home in May.

And, finally, the playlist:
The Donnas, “Hot Pants”
Van Halen, “Eruption”
Kings of Leon, “Molly’s Chambers”
Rolling Stones, “Respectable”
Nirvana, “Sliver”

-M.

Monday Warm-Up tidbits: Lohse, Wainwright, plenty more

The Winter Warm-Up is wrapping up and it’s almost time for the Writers’ Dinner. Here are some tidbits from another busy day. Hard to remember a Warm-Up with this much news.

* Kyle Lohse said he’s had a normal winter and hasn’t felt anything at all in his forearm since about two weeks after the season ended. He’s on his usual program and has no worries about how he will feel once he starts throwing off a mound.
“I’ve been playing catch for two weeks, and it’s like a normal this-part-of-the-year for me,” he said. “I’m not doing anything different right now. A couple weeks ago I was making sure I was doing a little extra exercises to make sure the strength was still there and I didn’t feel any tightness or any of the feelings I was feeling last year. And I wasn’t feeling it, so I feel good about where I’m at.”
* Likewise, Adam Wainwright said he’s taken no extra precautions or extra rest after enduring a career-high workload in 2009.
“I actually felt a lot more healthy during the season than I ever have, to be honest with you,” Wainwright said. “I stayed on my training program with Pete Prinzi a lot better, a lot more consistent with my work ethic between starts. I think that made me feel better each and every start I made. And actually I felt better at the end of the season than I did at the beginning. 
“So when I got done with this season, I felt like I was in better shape than I’ve ever ended a season. My body seemed to recover really well. We’ll see about, I haven’t got off the mound yet but my arm feels great, my body feels great. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. I haven’t done anything different. It’s the same program I’ve been doing for years. It seems to be working OK. I don’t think I’ll change it.”
* La Russa said that if the Cardinals only make one move, he ranks a hitter as a higher priority than a pitcher — and ideally, a hitter who could play third base and the outfield. Felipe Lopez comes to mind.
“We’re talking about creating a competition at third,” he said. “We can use some outfield depth. If you only have one bullet, [you'd like] a guy that can do both those things.
“When you have some of the possibilities we have — like with Kyle [McClellan], with [Mitchell] Boggs, with [Blake] Hawksworth — if you have the resources, I think right now, in my opinion, probably a position player has a slightly higher priority than a pitcher.”
* Allen Craig said he’s been taking some balls at third base, after playing in the outfield all last year. That may be another way they create competition for David Freese at third, though I’m still skeptical as to whether the organization really takes Craig seriously as a third baseman.
Playlist:
U2, “Pride (In the Name of Love)”
Public Enemy, “By the Time I Get to Arizona”
Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A Changin’”
Marvin Gaye, “Abraham, Martin and John”
Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”
-M.

Sunday tidbits: DeRosa, Boggs, Glaus, Stock, Wainwright

The Tidbits are belated today, but hopefully worth the wait.

* Mark DeRosa was held out of today’s lineup due to some soreness in his wrist. TLR spoke confidently about it after the game, though.

“He [DeRosa] said, ‘I could have played,’” La Russa said. “Barry [Weinberg, head athletic trainer] said this is a really good day [to rest him]. He’s got a little soreness, a little stiffness. Give him the day, take the off day tomorrow. He’ll play Tuesday.”

HOWEVER — if DeRosa is not in fact in there on Tuesday, don’t panic. He has pretty rough numbers (2-for-20, no XBH, 7 Ks) against Braden Looper, while Khalil Greene has hit Looper very well (4-for-12, 2 HR).

* Mitchell Boggs will start next Saturday in Pittsburgh.

* It appears very likely that Troy Glaus will be activated on Tuesday, when rosters can be expanded, but he may be the only one added to the roster that day. Memphis is in a pennant race and the bulk of the callups may wait until the Triple-A team is done.

* The Cards’ second-round Draft pick this year, Robert Stock, has been promoted from rookie-level Johnson City all the way to low Class A Quad Cities. I asked Jeff Luhnow about this today, and he said it’s largely because QC is still playing, while JC’s season is ending, and they want to get Stock all the work he can get. Still, it’s no coincidence that Stock is going where Shelby Miller is. Ideally, the two will be at QC together next year.

* Adam Wainwright will start Friday in Pittsburgh, and then the following Wednesday at the end of the road trip. After THAT, TLR said, Wainwright will get an extra day before his next start thanks to the Sept. 10 off day.

No playlist, since it’s already too late and time to get on home. G’night.

-M.

« older posts | back to blog home |
Theme: MLB “pro” | Get a free blog at WordPress.com
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 18,861 other followers