Wainwright not sharp, but far from worst
Coming off his second-best performance of the season last Thursday, Adam Wainwright can be forgiven for a chucker-like outing Tuesday night in New York. But while a couple of media outlets are describing it as his worst of the year, it wasn’t quite the case, as his June 9 and 24 starts were worse:
| Date | Opp | IP | BB | SO | HR | BF | FIGS |
| 6/24 | TOR | 4 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 19 | 26 |
| 6/9 | LAD | 6 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 30 | 32 |
| 5/15 | CIN | 6 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 27 | 41 |
| 7/27 | NYM | 5 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 24 | 41 |
| 4/7 | CIN | 7 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 25 | 49 |
| 6/14 | SEA | 7 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 28 | 49 |
| 5/30 | CHC | 7 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 28 | 50 |
| 7/9 | HOU | 8 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 31 | 52 |
| 4/24 | SFG | 8 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 33 | 56 |
| 4/29 | ATL | 6 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 24 | 56 |
Throw in his May 15 clunker against the Reds as at least as bad, and it’s clear that last night wasn’t Waino’s worst. That’s not to say it was good, of course. But, as Bill James once wrote, much of what we perceive as pitching is in fact defense, and looking merely at the "earned" run total can mislead. Sure, Waino walked three batters, but he has done that six times this year. He struck out six of the only 24 batters he faced, and induced a helpful ratio of groundballs to flyballs (7:4).
We think it’s a little disingenuous, then, when the Post-Dispatch game story includes the tautological observation "In what has become a season defined by the Cardinals’ inconsistencies, a big constant succumbed to the trend as Wainwright allowed a season-high six runs in five innings." If there’s one constant about a 162-game baseball season, it’s that there will be inconsistencies, insofar as few things are constant over such a long period. Does the P-D think that in order to be consistent, a player can’t occasionally have a subpar game or go hitless in two or three consecutive games?