Adam Wainwright normally would have left on Thursday for Jupiter, Florida, site of Cardinals spring training, where he has spent the past 17 springs.
Instead the 40-year-old righthander has been tossing balls into a net and working out with his old Glynn Academy high school team in Brunswick, Georgia, when he hasn’t been battling COVID.
Wainwright, who took a few days off during 2021 to tend to his family members when they came down with COVID, contracted a mild form of it last week.
“I had a couple of days where I felt pretty crummy,” he said. “Small fever and the chills. Then I had a couple days after that where I felt zapped. Since then, except for a little cough, back to normal.
“About everybody in the world has had it, I think,” said Wainwright.
The veteran is trying to replicate Jupiter the best he can as he works out in the St. Simons Island area. One big difference is that he's not throwing to his longtime battery mate Yadier Molina, as the players and owners haggle over their next collective bargaining agreement, which has the sport in a lockout instituted by the owners.
“Don’t have anywhere to be yet,” Wainwright said. “I don’t even know what spring training looks like or if it’s going to happen.”
Wainwright said that as the days go by without an agreement, he suspects spring training will be shorter this year. “All that means to me is that I need to be further down the path (when) I do report,” he said.
“You can get to the same spot, or close to it, if you were in camp without being in camp. I can face (high school) hitters here. I can take PFPs (pitchers’ fielding practice) and do all that kind of stuff here. And if that’s what I have to do, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Wainwright said that for the season to start on time on March 31, teams would need three weeks’ worth of exhibition games. "You could get four starts as a starting pitcher,’’ he said.
“This complicates things. Down there, throwing to big-league catchers is pretty important. Throwing to Yadier is a little different than throwing to the net in the back yard.”
But Glynn Academy has thrown open its doors “and I can be a normal Joe in practice with them,” said Wainwright. “So I’ll be in high school for a couple of weeks. But I’ve got my school diploma.”
So Wainwright said he wouldn’t be taking any classes at the high school but would be doing some learning at a career academy school featuring welding and carpentry. “These kids are doing that now at the high school level and coming out much more prepared than they would have been,” Wainwright said.
“I like going over there to weld with them. They made my chicken coops for me. And they’ve built our shotgun five stand at the farm. I try to keep those kids as busy as possible.”
Besides taking care of himself as a baseball player, Wainwright is the father of four girls and a 3-year-old boy and has 220 chickens for free-range eggs.
Wainwright’s kids, he joked, “like to gather the eggs and they like to pet the chickens every now and then but they don’t like to do any of the work that goes with it. There’s no shoveling.”
When the players do get to spring training, whether it be later February or March, Wainwright cautioned that they not rush their conditioning at the expense of arm or leg injuries. Or do something stupid such as engaging in sprints with other pitchers three days before the end of spring training. Wainwright, Luke Gregerson and Alex Reyes all suffered leg injuries during such horseplay in 2019.
“Lesson learned,” said Wainwright. “Lesson learned.
“You can tell guys all day long — until you’re blue in the face — to be very prepared and to work things in very slow,” he said. “But there’s no speed like game speed that you can replicate. You can’t replicate it against guys who aren’t big-league athletes.”
Wainwright has two numbers staring at him as he prepares for what may or may not be his final season. The numbers are 16 and 20.
Sixteen victories would give him 200 for his career, not implausible inasmuch as Wainwright won 17 games this past season. Twenty starts with Molina would give the pair 325 for their career, one ahead of the former Detroit Tigers battery of lefthander Mickey Lolich, who broke the Cardinals’ hearts by winning three games in the 1968 World Series, and the late Bill Freehan.
Addressing the goal of 200, Wainwright said, “To quote the great John Lackey (a former Cardinals teammate), that’s a great round number. It would make me feel a whole lot better about some of those injuries that I had that made me miss some seasons in my prime. But ... all I can control is pitching well and holding our team in the game deep into games. That’s the way you allow yourself to win more games — to stay in them a little bit longer. You might get one or more losses that way. But you also might get five or six more wins.”
Today’s trend among the analytics set is that starting pitching, and, concurrently, starting pitchers’ wins, aren’t that important anymore and managers are apt either to use an “opener” to pitch one inning or pull a starter before five innings and go heavily to the bullpen.
“I don’t think anybody who knows what they’re talking about would say that starting pitching doesn’t matter,” Wainwright said. “Those are people who have taken it too far the other way.
“There’s a good balance to be had in understanding the metrics and the nuances of the newer style of baseball but also understanding the older things about the game as well. You can’t just be ‘old school’ anymore but you can’t just be ‘new school’ either.
“In the course of a game, there are times when you have to go on the fly and trust your instincts. Starting pitching still is the best way to win. If your starting pitcher gives up four runs in the first inning, you’re probably going to lose that game. If your starting pitcher throws six or seven scoreless innings, you’re probably going to win that game. No one’s talking about it but the best way to manage a long season is good starting pitching.
“Otherwise, you’re going to run that train from Triple-A back and forth and you might have a bunch of guys not ready to pitch yet. I’m obviously a little biased but stating pitching still is the most important commodity in the game of baseball. There’s just no denying it.
“Who goes to watch the games when you’ve got two guys on the mound that nobody’s ever heard about? You’ve got No. 96 and No. 87 starting against each other. Are you going to go watch that game or are you going to watch (Clayton) Kershaw versus (Max) Scherzer? Those are the game people want to watch. I just hope that doesn’t get lost because people fall so far towards the new way of doing things.”
Rather than ringing the 200 victory bell, Wainwright will have a little more control about taking the ball at least 20 more times with Molina.
“The game is so old — there’s so much history behind it,” Wainwright said. “Any time you can say you had the most all-time ‘anything’ in baseball is a real accomplishment. I just look so much forward to having an opportunity to break that record with my buddy, Yadi. I hope we get enough starts to make that happen. We just need the season to start.
“But I’m looking for the full season for lots of different reasons. Obviously, for fan reasons and for personal reasons in things I’m trying to reach statistically but just for the enjoyment of the game and the validity of the season. Hopefully, the owners and the players can get together. These owners are going to have to come around, though. They’re kind of crazy with their ‘asks.’ I guess when you own the company, you want to see how far you can stretch it.
“The game of baseball is a very lucrative thing for players and owners. The ones that get left out of that are always the fans, unfortunately. Baseball sometimes just needs to get out of its own way and realize we could be the only show going. It would just be really great for the game if we were out there playing.”
Next up for Wainwright is an appearance at Boondocks in Springfield, Illinois, on Sunday, benefiting his Big League Impact charity. He and Jim Edmonds will sign autographs in the afternoon and Wainwright will join country artists Dallas Davidson, Dylan Marlowe and Rachel Wammack for a concert. Wainwright confirmed Edmonds would not be singing.
Though many have presumed this will be Wainwright’s final season, he never has said that. Then, using the example of the reporting concerning the retirement of NFL star quarterback Tom Brady, Wainwright, said, “If you ever see (my own retirement) publicized by Adam Schefter or someone else, it’s hogwash.
“I’m going to be the first one to announce that. And it’s not going to come out any other way.”
