With milestone win in sight, Waino relishes stopper role

NEW YORK -- Adam Wainwright no longer enjoys those sweaty, taxing weight room sessions, the daily aches and pains that stem from throwing tens of thousands of pitches or the arduous road trips that take him away from his family for extended periods.

But what he does still love about pitching at 41 years old and 18 years into his career -- and, in some ways, what he still lives for -- is the role he was precariously placed into on Saturday as a stopper for the Cardinals. It’s a role he’s always relished and one that still gets his adrenaline pumping, 398 starts into a career that will someday end with him wearing a red jacket as a Cardinals Hall of Famer.

With the Cardinals having lost six games in a row and in need of something to believe in, they cast their eyes to Wainwright and the magic he has always had a knack of summoning in New York against the rival Mets. Fittingly enough, Wainwright rediscovered his best curveball of the season, broke through the barrier that the fifth inning has been for him for weeks and delivered his finest outing of the season in St. Louis' 5-3 victory.

On the surface, Saturday will be remembered as career win No. 198 for Wainwright. But to the veteran pitcher, something much more significant to him was responding well enough to stop a St. Louis skid and rekindle the will of a squad that had appeared broken for weeks while dropping 11 of 13. The Cardinals needed their 6-foot-7 former ace more than ever on Saturday, and he came through in a big way with his seventh victory in his last 10 starts against the Mets.

“I’d rather be the guy who continues a streak of winning, but we needed to win today, and I was grateful to be on the mound when we did [win],” said Wainwright, who allowed three runs over a season-best 6 1/3 innings pitched. “It was good to be in the seventh inning finally, and we did a lot of good things today.”

Wainwright got plenty of help from his teammates, less than 24 hours after the Redbirds were whipped 6-1 by the Mets in 2 hours and 1 minute. On Saturday, Wainwright was able to overcome a Brandon Nimmo leadoff homer on his first pitch when Paul Goldschmidt and Jordan Walker homered and Andre Pallante, Giovanny Gallegos and Jordan Hicks were stellar in relief. For once, a Cardinals squad that has had trouble putting all facets of the game together showed what’s possible when they do.

“We’ve got so many young guys in here with sky-is-the-limit potential, and when we do come together and get these kinds of wins, it shows what we’re capable of,” said Hicks, who threw 10 of his 15 pitches at 100 mph or faster and used sinkers of 103.4 mph and 102.7 mph for ninth-inning strikeouts. “It’s just about us being more consistent with it.”

Wainwright was serious when he said he would choose Hicks’ “electric” stuff if he could pitch like any other big leaguer right now. Instead, he’s now forced to get by with a fastball that rarely breaks 90 anymore, a cutter that saws bats in two and a hard breaking ball that seemingly defies the laws of gravity. His 29 sinkers topped out at 88.4 mph and his 29 curveballs bottomed out at 67.2 mph -- 58 pitches that resulted in just two swings and misses.

Instead, Wainwright got the Mets to hit into double plays in the second and fourth innings. In the sixth inning, he was booed lustily by the fans at Citi Field when he stopped to tie his shoes -- “Oh, I liked that,” he said -- and he responded by striking out Brett Baty with his best curveball of the game.

Of course, that big breaking ball -- which featured 71 inches of vertical break, according to Baseball Savant -- reminded some of the bender that Wainwright threw in 2006 at Shea Stadium to punch out Carlos Beltrán and send the Cardinals to the World Series, which they won by beating the Tigers.

“I didn’t get a chance to go changeup, curveball, curveball again this time,” said Wainwright, referring to the famous pitch sequence called by catcher Yadier Molina to Beltrán. “I love playing here. I actually got some applause from Mets fans tonight, which was very surprising, and it was appreciated. … Probably because they want me to leave.”

The Cards don’t want Wainwright to leave yet, and they were happy he was on the mound to be their stopper again.

“It was important to him, and I knew he wanted to do that really bad,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “For Waino to give us the innings he did, it was extremely important and needed.”