Why Adam Wainwright’s Best Days Are In Front Of Him

Before last spring training’s devastating injury to the Ulnar Collateral Ligament in Adam Wainwright’s right elbow, he was hitting his stride as one of the top pitchers in baseball.  Before undergoing surgery to replace the ligament with a tendon graft, a procedure known more commonly throughout baseball circles simply as “Tommy John,” Wainwright had been the closer for a World Series Champion, he had been selected to an All-Star Game, and he had finished in the top 3 for the Cy Young award voting two years in a row.  For those two years, he was the best pitcher in baseball who was not named Roy Halladay.  It is a difficult sell to say that a guy coming off of a multi-year stretch like that has even bigger things to come, especially after taking an entire year off and having surgeons cutting into the his pitching elbow.

Wainwright will be joining a long list of pitchers who are coming back from Tommy John surgery, and the results have been largely positive for many of his peers including Carpenter, Westbrook, McClellan, and Garcia on his own team.  Could there be a better place for Wainwright to be after his surgery?  He literally cannot go anywhere in camp without running into someone who has been a teammate of his for years who has been exactly where he is now.  He was on the team when he watched Chris Carpenter come back from his own torn UCL to finish 2^nd in the Cy Young Award voting.  This is not to say that we can write him down for 20 wins already.

It appears that the Cardinals will wisely be monitoring Wainwright’s innings closely during his return to major league mounds.  Carpenter, after coming off of a year and a half of rehab and a short stint of abbreviated outings for the Cardinals, came back to throw 192.2 innings in 2009, his first year back after Tommy John, and he enjoyed career highs in win percentage and ERA.  While these are lofty goals for Wainwright this season, it is not out of the question that this season he could be a very effective pitcher.  It is not out of the question that after this year, Wainwright could become the best pitcher in baseball.

I was once a pitcher who stood 6’7 and was fortunate enough to pitch for an NCAA division I school that was nationally ranked.  Unfortunately for me, this is about as much in common as I have with the talented Adam Wainwright, except for one thing: I once felt the pop that came with the tearing of my UCL during a pitch.  In my case, the ligament was not completely torn and I was able to continue to pitch with damage that will always exist in the joint.  After the day that I felt that pop, my life as a pitcher was never quite the same.  I would have good days where my elbow would feel fine and my velocity would sit in the 89-91 mph range, and just when I would be excited about the prospects of being healed, I would see this range dip into the mid to low 80’s in future games.  I had multiple games where I would throw a pitch and walk around the mound until I could feel my little two fingers again or the pain would subside enough to be able to throw the next pitch.  The bottom line was that I would never be able to be a consistent and effective pitcher without the full use of an intact UCL.

Adam Wainwright was able to pitch in the Major Leagues at an amazingly high level with a similar injury to what I experienced.  In 2004, Wainwright was diagnosed with a tear in his UCL that although it did not require surgery at the time, was indicative of a future where a surgical consult was just one pitch away.  Having experienced pitching with an elbow that could go at any time myself, I am absolutely amazed at how great Wainwright has pitched since being called up to the major leagues.  He has been nothing short of fantastic during his career with the Cardinals, and now we may finally see what he can do at 100%.  Scary thought isn’t it?