SAN DIEGO – With their offense already in the throes of an ugly drought that has seen them score just one run in the past 34 innings, the Cardinals didn’t exactly need any more bad news to emerge from Tuesday’s 5-0 loss to the Padres.
However, that’s just what they got when 41-year-old pitcher Adam Wainwright revealed that the “dead-arm period” he thought was coming out of last week negatively affected his ability to finish off pitches again in Tuesday’s up-and-down outing. Much like the struggling Cardinals offense, the franchise fixture is having to battle through fatigue and frustration now.
“I’m still in it, I’m in the battle,” Wainwright said of the arm fatigue that played a role in him giving up four runs and six hits, while his first (and only) strikeout of the game didn’t come until the sixth inning. “My body feels great, but with my arm, there’s just no explosiveness to anything right now.”
Wainwright’s arm fatigue manifests itself in his inability to get swing-and-misses -- a rarity throughout his career with one of the most daunting curveballs in the history of the game. On Tuesday, Ha-Seong Kim jumped all over a Wainwright curveball that came in waist high -- instead of shin high -- and hit it 365 feet off the angled warehouse in left field at Petco Park.
“Everything is just kind of rolling in there right now and I don’t have the right bite on the heater, don’t have the right bite on the cutter, and I don’t have that late finish on the curveball,” Wainwright said semi-disgustedly. “The only pitch I threw today for swing and miss was [my] changeup. I’ve just got to keep bobbing and weaving right now.”
Wainwright had just seven swing-and-misses against the 25 batters he faced. He last failed to record a strikeout on June 15 against the Cubs, but he went the next 18 starts getting plenty of swing and miss with his curveball, cutter and changeup. Had he not argued to pitch the sixth inning Tuesday -- his best one of the night -- Wainwright would not have been in the game to fan Jake Cronenworth.
“It’s the breaking ball being up and not down and getting swing and miss with it,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “Sometimes he’s very good about utilizing the sinker, too, to finish off at-bats. But right now, that breaking ball is more up in the zone than we would like.”
Further complicating matters was Wainwright having little to no safety net because the Cardinals are in one of their worst offensive ruts. The only run they have scored in their past 34 innings came on a fielder’s choice in which baserunner Andrew Knizner took a throw off his elbow to score. The Cardinals' last RBI came in the third inning of Saturday’s Game 1 of a doubleheader when Yadier Molina hit a home run.
“You know there are going to be ups and downs, and obviously we haven’t played our best in the last few games, but it’s part of the game and we’ll keep going,” said leading NL MVP candidate Paul Goldschmidt, who had a hard-hit double on Tuesday to snap out of a two-game skid. “We have to keep going and trying to find ways to play better.”
Wainwright also wants to feel and pitch better. He’s surrendered four earned runs in three of his last four outings -- a rarity for a pitcher who came into Tuesday with a career record of 40-15 in September/October. The outlier, of course, was last Wednesday when he and Molina set the NL/AL record for starts for a battery with 325. That night, he gutted his way through the arm fatigue to limit the Brewers to one run over five innings.
Start No. 326 didn’t go as well as the Padres got to him for two runs in the first and one run each in the fourth and fifth. Of course, Wainwright has loads of experience to lean on when it comes to dealing with the arm fatigue. His hope, of course, is that it’s long gone by playoff time.
“It usually lasts three or four games, but that’s my fourth one in a row where my stuff has been down,” Wainwright said. “It’s never gone five before, so hopefully next game is the one. I’ve never had this in September before and that’s the frustrating thing. Usually, it’s in June or July, and September is my best month. As long as my October is not this way, we’ll be fine.”