Wainwright’s other breaking ball
DOWNTOWN — For obvious reasons, Adam Wainwright’s curve ball gets all the press. It was, after all, at the heart of what The New York Daily News called the biggest sports moment in New York City sports back in 2006. It froze Carlos Beltran, sent the Cardinals to the World Series and, Wainwright joked recently, is the ball Yadier Molina “let me keep.”
It is a primo bender. No doubt.
But, this season, it hasn’t been Wainwright’s best breaking pitch.
Ask Molina about Wainwright’s slider and the catcher beams.
“Yes, yes, the slider — that’s more than one of the pitches he can throw for a strike,” Molina said after Wainwright’s last start. ”He’s got that slider now. It’s nasty. It’s one of the best in the league, in my opinion. He’s getting guys swinging and missing at it. It’s one of those pitches.”
Wainwright goes for his third consecutive victory tonight, facing Pittsburgh at Busch Stadium. A win would put the Cardinals at 11 games better than .500 for the first time this season and give them their first four-game series victory of the season. It would also keep Wainwright undefeated at home, where he is 4-0 in 2008.
In his start earlier this home stand, Wainwright worked eight innings and held Houston to one run. He struck out eight and against one of the most muscular lineups in the league — anchored by the hottest hitter of the month, Lance Berkman — he retired 15 consecutive batters at one point. The Astro who launched one of Wainwright’s pitches, Ty Wigginton, said afterward he got a fastball up and pounced.
“Because,” Wigginton said, “his slider was outstanding.”
Wainwright throws a two-seam fastball, a changeup, the curve, the slider and has a four-seam fastball, which he holds like a lefthander because he learned it from a lefthander, his brother. He threw a curve to Beltran with the bases loaded in Game 7 of the NLCS and the pennant on the line because, he said, “it’s my best pitch.” In Game 5 of the World Series, he closed out the title with three consecutive sliders to Brandon Inge. He described it later as his third-best pitch. (Molina tucked away that ball for his own collection, handing the pennant-clincher to Wainwright.)
Third-best is no longer the case.
According to pitch-type statistics available over at Bill James Online, Wainwright has thrown more sliders this season to righthanded hitters than he has thrown curveballs total, 206 to 202. In 2006, as a reliever, he threw the curve more (303 to 183) and as a first-year starter he sided with it more as well (582 to 515). While he continues to fire the curve effectively to hitters on both sides of the plate, his slider is no longer the third-class pitch.
It gives him a put-away pitch to play off his fastballs.
“Last year, I had that cutter I worked with and tried; now it’s the slider,” Wainwright said. “This year, the thing I have to fight is you don’t want to do too much with it. I can fall in love with it and get, well, you get a little slider-happy.”
Wainwright has taken to varying his slider so that it can be a few different pitches for him. He can throw a tight, speedy slider that is a cousin of the cut fastball he test drove. He can take a little off and get a change-of-pace slider, and then he toss the more common, whistling slider.
That blend is what has Molina grinning.
Wainwright has been able to buzz a slider for a strikeout, take a little off for a groundball, and he’s working to get that tigher, sharper slider inside to lefties. A year ago he threw only 105 sliders to lefties (7 percent). The percentage is similar this year (9) but he thinks there’s a spot where the slider will work.
“You watch for the really bad swing and try to get them confused,” Wainwright said. “I like that slider because if they don’t know it’s coming it’s pretty cool.”
-30-
Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
It has been fun to watch the progression of Wainwright. He clearly has the stuff to be a front of the rotation pitcher. Hopefully our offense will pick it up and give him a shot at 20 wins.