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Cardinals and right-handed Adam wainwright agree on a deal that will bring the right-hander back to St. Louis for the 2022 season, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Twitter).
Wainwright, who turned 40 at the end of August, turned back time to deliver one of the best seasons of his career in 2021. He is second among all Major League pitchers with 206 1/3 innings pitched and achieved a 3.05 ERA. it is the fifth best score he has ever achieved in a full season.
Although he averages only 89.3 mph on his heater this season, Wainwright has avoided violent contact, demonstrated strong mastery (six percent duty rate) and kept the ball on the ground at an above-average rate. It pairs well with the world infield defense in St. Louis and has helped Wainwright thrive even despite a below-average strikeout rate of 21%. He also kept the ball in the court at its lowest rate since 2014 (0.92 HR / 9, 11.7% homer-to-flyball rate).
This excellent season is likely to get Wainwright votes in Cy Young’s ballot, even though he is not the favorite to win it. (Corbin Burnes, Max Scherzer, Zack Wheeler and Walker Buehler are among the other main contenders.) It’s also very likely that Wainwright will be positioned for an $ 8 million pay raise this season, which turned into a bargain for a scorching Cardinals team that won. 17 straight games to clinch a Wild Card spot – a sudden-death showdown for which they’ve previously announced Wainwright as the starting pitcher.
Retaining Wainwright gives the Cardinals additional certainty in the rotation next year. He will fit in alongside other right-handed people Jack Flaherty, Miles Mikolas and Dakota hudson, which the latter has just returned from an operation of Tommy John. Best prospect Matthew the Liberator could be ready for its debut in early 2022, and the Cards have a handful of other internal options, including Jake woodford, Johan oviedo and, if they want to move him from the enclosure to a starting role, Alex reyes.
The Cards could of course dip their toes into the offseason market to start pitching. They are currently on the verge of losing Kwang hyun kim, JA Happ and Jon lester in free agency, and a lack of depth nearly sank their season earlier this summer when the majority of their rotation reached the injured list. St. Louis had less than $ 90 million in guaranteed contracts on the books in 2022 before re-signing Wainwright – Matt Charpentier and Carlos martinez will be excluded from the books once their 2022 options are turned down – so there is certainly room to add to the payroll.
More soon.
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