Adam Wainwright tossed in a subpar outing Sunday in San Francisco in the Cardinals’ 5-3 loss to the Giants. Wainwright, who had brought a string of three games in which he struck out at least seven batters, fanned only three and walked two batters of the team who walks least in the league.

We noted last week that Wainwright’s release-point change was successful. Did his performance Sunday have anything to do with his release point? Did he regress?

It appears that, after taking a step forward beginning on May 16, Wainwright took a step back Sunday. From his May 26 outing to Sunday’s, Wainwright seemed to return to his higher, overhead delivery — about four to five inches higher and three to four inches more overhead (again, thanks to Brooks Baseball). As a result, his two-seam fastball (which he threw 49 times Sunday, averaging a horizontal break of -7.92 and a vertical break of 8.43) wasn’t quite as sharp, moving about halfway between its pre-5/16 break (-7.05, 9.46) and its post-5/16 averages (-8.92, 7.55). It also appears that Wainwright’s curveball suffered yesterday, breaking about an inch less horizontally (8.32 to 7.43) from his 5/26 performance, though that’s a relatively small change.

We trust that the pitcher’s advisors, among them Chris Carpenter, will note the subtle shift and bring it to Wainwright’s attention in time for his next start, though, of course, Carpenter now has other performances to pay attention to, such as his own.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.