Adam Wainwright Returns to St. Louis

A familiar face is staying in St. Louis, as veteran starter Adam Wainwright, a Cardinal for 18 years now, came to an agreement Thursday on returning to the team for the 2021 season. The deal is believed to be worth $8 million — a bump in guaranteed money from his $5 million going into 2020 and $2 million in ’19.

This one-year deal isn’t, however, one of those last-gasp contracts agreed to with a franchise stalwart brought back in a wave of nostalgia. With Jack Flaherty slumping in 2020, Wainwright was the team’s most valuable pitcher and one of the primary reasons the Cardinals were able to sneak into the playoffs toward the back of the inflated 16-team field. In 10 starts, his 3.15 ERA was his best figure in a full season since 2014. Not only did he pitch well, but he also pitched deep into games, with his 6.6 innings per game being practically Old Hoss Radbourn-esque by modern standards. That was enough for third among qualifying pitchers behind only Kyle Hendricks and Trevor Bauer.

In a sense, 2020 was the completion of a comeback from Wainwright’s most recent season ruined by injury — a 2018 campaign in which he was shut down for most of the year due to a sore elbow. It was the fourth season he lost to injury as a pro, following 2015 (a ruptured Achilles tendon), ’11 (Tommy John surgery), and most of ’04 (a partial UCL tear).

You could make the argument, however, that Wainwright was never struggling as much as his ERA suggested. We use a stat like FIP because it’s less volatile than ERA and tends to have more predictive value. Since 2016, Wainwright’s FIPs have been in a fairly tight band, with less than a half-run per game separating the worst year (4.36) from the best (3.93). He didn’t actually lose any velocity at this time, either — Waino was never a traditional power pitcher — and people were a bit too quick to give the eulogy for his career.

Getting back Wainwright for at least one more run is a coup for the Cardinals as currently constructed. Flaherty will likely return to being the ace, but after him and Kwang Hyun Kim, there are a lot of question marks in the rotation. Dakota Hudson will miss the 2021 season due to Tommy John surgery, and while Miles Mikolas seemed to have avoided a tear that would have required him to undergo the same procedure, any pitcher recovering from forearm surgery comes with enormous risk. Carlos Martinez hasn’t been a full-time starter since 2017 and had a rough 2020 season delayed by a bout of COVID-19 that put him in the hospital. The belief is the Cardinals still would prefer Alex Reyes to work out as a starter, but given his injury history, it wouldn’t take many setbacks for them to pull the plug and use him out of the ‘pen.

Wainwright, then, provides some stability for the rotation. In this odd offseason, he also represents the second-biggest signing by an NL Central team, as sad as that is.

ZiPS does see Wainwright at a high risk of decline in 2021, as do the other projection systems housed here. Generally speaking, injury is a bigger deal for pitchers than age is, but once you get to the late-30s, the possibility of age-related decline increases considerably. He also held hitters to a slugging percentage 70 points lower than expected from his Statcast data (ZiPS says 65), and he’s not a pitcher with a history of stymying the panel of expected numbers. The contract reflects the risk, and if Wainwright were going on 30 instead of 40, I’d be shocked for the Cards to ink him for money this light.

Bringing back Wainwright alone isn’t enough for the Cardinals to just call the offseason done and get ready for the spring. That makes it encouraging to see the current rumored Nolan Arenado discussions with the Rockies, a topic that has popped up for more than a year at this point. An addition like that could propel the Cards above the mediocrity-addled NL Central, and not a moment too soon. If that deal happens, it might be, at least in part, because St. Louis felt just a bit safer in the rotation with Wainwright’s return.