Adam Wainwright: ‘I’m not ready to be done yet’

11:55 AM ET

ST. LOUIS — Perceptions can be fickle. When Adam Wainwright was mired in the worst slump of his major-league career about a month ago, he felt like his fastball was coming out of his hand with practically nothing on it.

Told that his average fastball was only about 1 mph off what it has been lately, with Wainwright showing signs of bouncing back to his usual ace form, he seemed surprised.

“I was pitching at 88 to 89 [mph], seemingly. I haven’t checked the numbers, but I’m pitching at 91 to 92 now, I think, which is not just 1 mph to me,” he said.

Manager Mike Matheny saw it differently.

Adam Wainwright appears to have shaken off a sluggish start to the season with a 3.20 ERA in his past three starts. AP Photo/John Amis

“If anything, he was throwing harder at the beginning of the year,” Matheny said.

The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. In Wainwright’s worst start of the year, April 16 against the Cincinnati Reds, his average fastball was clocked at 91.1 mph and his hardest was clocked at 92.9, according to pitchF/X tracking data. In his most recent start, in Washington, his average fastball was 92.1 and his hardest was 94.7.

It may not seem like much, but 1 mph can make a radical difference to a pitcher such as Wainwright, who uses a lively fastball, with good late life, to set up one of the nastiest curveballs in baseball. That would explain why it felt like a larger difference than it actually was. Though the results have been modestly better …

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