Some milestones elude St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright. But he gets the last laugh
For all of the things Adam Wainwright has accomplished in his career, there’s a curious collection of achievements which have eluded him.
He’s never won a Cy Young Award, for starters. Twice he finished second and twice more he finished third, and in 2009 he received the most first place votes despite landing in third place overall.
Despite his commitment to the contrary, he hasn’t been able to maintain a .200 career batting average, given his struggles at the plate to start this season. He also hasn’t quite reached 200 wins, sitting 22 short of the mark.
Before Wednesday night, he also hadn’t chalked up a Maddux, the single game achievement named for Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, which requires a pitcher to record a complete game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches thrown.
He has one now, and it goes on the list of accomplishments that stretch far beyond baseball and which shape the contours of a career which has been exceptional in every fashion.
“I didn’t look at my pitch count all day,” Wainwright said from Pittsburgh Wednesday night, “because I knew it was low. But I didn’t want to get it in my mind.”
The stellar showing came with two hits, including an RBI single, which made Wainwright the first pitcher in St. Louis Cardinals franchise history to record a verified (official pitch counts have only been kept since 1988) complete game shutout of less than 100 pitches in tandem with a multi-hit game at the plate.
Should such an accomplishment be called a “Wainwright?”
As he contemplated the question, he leaned back in his chair, smiled wide, and pumped his hands in a “raise the roof” gesture, drawing out the first word of his answer.
“Yeah, we probably should call that a Waino,” he grinned. “You said it, not me. I just agreed with you.”
Another thing Wainwright didn’t do, by his recounting, is hit the weight room with Greg Maddux as often as was offered. In his days as a farmhand in the Atlanta system, Wainwright recalled Maddux extending an invitation — 6:00 a.m., he’d be there on the leg extension machine, doing a crossword puzzle and offering to talk pitching.
“And I thought that was too early in the morning,” Wainwright lamented. “That’s just one of my biggest regrets ever. I should have done that. What an idiot.”
Still, he learned well enough. Less than three weeks before his 40th birthday, Wainwright’s nine innings on Wednesday night catapulted him into second place on the National League leaderboard for innings pitched.
Zack Wheeler, who leads, is 31. Walker Buehler, in third place, is 27. Sandy Alcantara, in fourth? He’s 25.
The Cardinals, who have lost every other member of their starting rotation to injury at various points in 2021, would be utterly lost without their senior partner.
“It’s been absolutely huge,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt agreed. “You think about it, every other guy in the starting rotation hasn’t had the opportunity to be able to eat those innings and do that for us. And so having one is huge, and having a way to be able to do it is critical.”
With Wainwright, of course, the plaudits are hardly reserved to one season. For more than 15 years he, along with Yadier Molina, has been a constant, defining force in establishing the character and comportment of the Cardinals franchise.
“There’s no question that the more people and players you have like that, the more that culture stays, which has been the case here in this organization,” Shildt said.
Molina has been open about his desire to play beyond this season; Wainwright has been less so, describing being torn between knowing what his body is capable of and wondering whether he’s better served at home with his wife and five children.
Still, asked to reflect on his outsized accomplishments in the summer he turns 40, he sounds entirely like a pitcher with more to prove.
“I don’t think I want to go there just yet, because the job is not done yet,” Wainwright said. “You know, I don’t want to be proud of anything just yet. I want to finish what we started here, and then at the end of the year, maybe I’ll look back. Or at the end of my career, I’ll look back and be like, you know, that was pretty neat.
“But I’m trying not to go there right now.”
Wainwright’s Wednesday made him the oldest pitcher since MLB has kept official pitch counts to record a shutout on as few as 88 pitches. He was the first Cardinal since Chris Carpenter on September 7, 2011 to record a Maddux, and he told the assembled media with pride that his wife still thinks he’s cute.
Greg Maddux himself threw his last shutout of any kind at 38 years old. He was no Adam Wainwright.
“He’s a joke,” teammate Jack Flaherty wrote on Twitter.
Somehow it seems that Wainwright is always the last one laughing.
