All of the starters have a JAWS of at least 42.0; roughly speaking, thats the equivalent of seven six-win seasons, a point at which I start to take mid-career pitchers seriously. Sabermetrics lover. You may have created an account with another Rogers Media account that can be used to sign in here. In the five innings Wainwright yielded eight hits and four earned runs for a 7.20 ERA. One Wainwright is a lot closer to establishing than perhaps even he realizes. This is a veteran, and he knows what he needs to do. The three Cy Young Awards should be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Hes racked up four seasons worth 67 WAR, plus a fifth at 5.7 and a sixth at 4.9; to improve that peak score substantially, he needs big seasons. For starters, no pitcher can stay that good for that long. Gibson, who died last October, finished with 3,117. Guerrero is on the Dominican Republic roster for this months World Baseball Classic. Can Adam Wainwright join St. Louis Cardinals teammates in Hall of Fame? Flaherty is calm. Its early in spring training. No Gavin Lux -- big problem. Will the games most enigmatic Hall of Fame candidate, a pending free agent this winter, stick around to get it? His career just does not stack up to that level. While he has never won a Cy Young Award, he was in the top 3 on four occasions. He made his 55 million dollar fortune with All-Star, St. Louis Cardinals, NL wins leader. Wainwright is absolutely not going to make it to Cooperstown, and the numbers say he shouldn't, but you can squint and you can cherry-pick statistics to make an argument for Wainwright if you enter with an agenda. He leads MLB in complete games this season at the age of 40, and is MLB's active leader in complete games with 27. Even in the he falls short but not short enough to not make it hypothetical, the easiest path is likely for Adam Wainwright to post 8.1 WAR under both methods. Adam Wainwright strikes out Chas McCormick swinging in the top of the 1st inning, one of his two strikeouts over three innings of work. Sales efficiency numbers are superb he has a 2.99 career ERA, a 1.054 WHIP, a 4.96 K:BB ratio, and hes working on five straight All-Star trips. Im far less convinced he deserves that, but using FanGraphs framing-inclusive WAR for catchers (supplemented by Baseball Prospectus pre-2008 framing data), its clear that he deserves a boost beyond off-the-shelf JAWS. Rile people up.. The Hall of Fame should immortalize the greatest starting pitchers of each era. How Corbin Burnes became an ace by making his bed, Top moments from Brady, Manning, Jordan and other athletes hosting 'Saturday Night Live', Fantasy baseball rankings, projections, strategy and cheat sheets, Spring batting averages, runs up amid shift limits. Were not concerned. This isnt your fathers Hall of Fame. Me talking about it is going to inflame some people Hes not a Hall of Famer! Wainwright said. That seems to be a pretty good baseline.. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Gerrit Cole (117 wins at age 31) and Chris Sale (114 wins at age 32) are the likeliest active pitchers to approach Wainwrights total. No one should expect to make money from the picks and predictions discussed on this website. It was almost a storybook season for the St. Louis Cardinals as club legends Adam Wainwright, Albert Pujols, and Yadier Molina were reunited and looked primed for a deep postseason run. 2020 has given us many. His cutter was next, dropping from his 2022 average of 84.3 mph to 80.8 mph, and his curveball decreased from 72.9 mph to 70.2 mph.. Sorry we could not verify that email address. His 2.2 WAR, meanwhile, edged him closer to the career standard (73.3). Or could it be that a lot of this is happening because Wainwright is 41 years old and headed to his 42nd birthday on Aug. 30? Bernie invites you to listen to his opinionated and analytical sports-talk show on 590 The Fan, KFNS-AM. But if youd told me four years ago when his career looked absolutely left for dead that I would even half-heartedly entertain the notion, I would have doubted that even more. Adam Wainwright was glad to see Jason Isringhausen enter the Cardinals Hall of Fame: "He had a profound impact on my career and helped me dramatically." The performance was unsurprisingly unsustainable. The 40-year . Adam Wainwright has the second-most WAR of any Cardinals pitcher all-time (44.5). For the last 35 years Bernie Miklasz has entertained, enlightened, and connected with generations of St. Louis sports fans. Adam Wainwright. (And hes been getting his work in, at least for the most part.) The ageless Bartolo Colon leads all active pitchers with 235, CC Sabathia is next at 230, and then its down to John Lackey at 180. Since then, hes made the All-Star team every year, led the league in wins on three occasions, and won a Cy Young award in each league. It happens a lot. Sometimes a little spring-training soreness is nothing more than a little spring-training soreness. He produced the worst set of metrics in a full season in his career. . Pujols, Wainwright and Molina were each given an introduction and trotted out to the diamond to be greeted by 16 Cardinals Hall of Famers. To be clear, Adam Wainwright will certainly make it onto the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, and based on the ease with which even seemingly fringe candidates are able to garner them, will probably get some votes. Drew move to Atlanta. They cited various ailments that impacted Wainos performance. I took a look at 10 active starting pitchers with borderline Hall of Fame resumes and broke down their odds of enshrinement. He went from having a 3.8 WAR in 2021 to 2.8 WAR last year. There are some people that feel Wainwright will join his legendary teammates in Cooperstown at some point in time, a trio of Hall of Famers all departing the Cardinals at the same time. Laurie Skrivan, St, Louis Post-Dispatch Here's a look at some other top Cardinals not in the Hall of Fame. His velocity has dropped again, though Wainwright did push it up a little in his second start. Sale went two years and a day between major league outings due to elbow inflammation, a flexor tendon strain, and Tommy John surgery, but hes made a solid return so far, with a 2.53 ERA and 27.9% strikeout rate through four starts. St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright joins Scott Braun, Erik Kratz, Todd Frazier, and AJ Pierzynski to talk about his final season and the legacy he's left behind. Follow him on Twitter @jay_jaffe and Mastodon @jay_jaffe. For more information, please read our Legal Disclaimer. Im going to disregard them for now, though all five should (and all but Sabathia probably will) make it eventually. King Felix is still just 31 years old, despite close to 2,500 innings on his right arm. The 35-year-old has a career record of 169-89 with a 3.19 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 2,682 strikeouts. He was hit hard four balls hit off him registered exit velocities higher than 104 mph, including a 112.1 mph solo moonshot of a homer off the bat of Jos Abreu. The only active pitchers behind Wainwright (2,375 2/3) in the 2,000-inning club are 36-year-old David Price (2,103 1/3), 35-year-old Johnny Cueto (2,034 1/3) and 32-year-old Madison Bumgarner (2,034). The Cardinals are calm. . Upon losing in the Wild Card round, the franchise's attention shifted to the offseason and what will happen to some of their aging players. To be clear, Adam Wainwright will certainly make it onto the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, and based on the ease with which even seemingly fringe candidates are able to garner them, will probably get some votes. by Retrosheet. The best pitcher in MLB? As his 136 OPS+ and 26 homers attest, he can still rake even at age 40, but with 443 career dingers, hes two seasons away from reaching 500 (42% odds, via ZiPS). Adam Wainwright K's McCormick. Hes never pitched for a World Series champion, and his career postseason statistics wont help him hes 2-8 with a 5.54 ERA, and hes gotten completely shelled on multiple occasions. Adam Wainwright was born on the 30th of August, 1981. DRS changes, injuries, and the shortened season have dealt the slugging third basemans case a set of blows in recent years, making it even harder to overcome his late start. (Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images), Wainwright strongly hinted he would retire alongside longtime batterymate Yadier Molina following next season. Well know more about Jacks Comeback after he makes his first two or three pitching appearances in the Florida game. Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. That may be what landed him on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation this year. He probably wont gain much more ground this year even assuming he does return, and as with the pitchers on either side of him in this list, free agency looms, though it seems unthinkable the Dodgers will let him depart. Adam Wainwright is the quintessential "Hall of Fame candidate for Cardinals fans" Hall of Fame candidate of the current team. Five years ago, Max Scherzer had no Hall of Fame case. Because he didnt debut until about five weeks before his 26th birthday, hes short in the two traditional stat categories, wins (77) and strikeouts (1,505), that tend to matter to voters, but as Ive argued, particularly if he can nab a third Cy Young, his will be something of a Koufaxian candidacy, where his career totals will matter less than the peak dominance. Focusing on what hes better at: Scherzer is just 19 strikeouts away from 3,000 and should reach the milestone this month, surpassing the likes of Juan Marichal, Roy Halladay, and Bob Feller on the JAWS leaderboard. Hes got a long ways to go to reach 200 wins (he has 112), but hes already at 2,031 strikeouts. Your favorite teams, topics, and players all on your favorite mobile devices. Both legends are heading off into the sunset, their final stop before they end up in Cooperstown in just a few short years. 2/4/18 Super Bowl champs. An error has occurred while trying to update your details. Hes endured shoulder miseries and a strained oblique. However, the future Cardinals Hall of Famer is coming off a 2022 season in which he lost velocity, suffered a decline in swing-and-miss stuff and faded to a 17.8 percent strikeout rate. {* traditionalSignIn_signInButton *}, Comment and participate in our online community. I want to confine my results to the integration era, as, while this whole exercise is based on some level of silliness, I dont think asking Adam Wainwright to win 40 games and pitch 400 innings is particularly fair. With eight All-Star selections, three Cy Young awards, and a World Series ring, Kershaw is probably a lock for election already, but reaching and surpassing some major career milestones would further elevate him in the pantheon. . Clayton Kershaw is this generations Sandy Koufax; he could retire right now and hed make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. . However, the future Cardinals Hall of Famer is coming off a 2022 season in which he lost velocity, suffered a decline in swing . Perhaps a new metric will be devised that paints Wainwright in an extraordinary new lightI cant really imagine what said metric would be, but Yadier Molinas career FanGraphs WAR shot up 18.4 wins in one day on which meaningful baseball games werent even played, so I am not going to dismiss the possibility hastily. Yadier Molinas career FanGraphs WAR shot up 18.4 wins in one day, The 2022 St. Louis Cardinals and the next generational passage St. Louis Bullpen. After suffering a setback around the trade deadline, he only returned to throwing on August 25; the Mets are holding out hope that the 33-year-old righty can rejoin them by mid-September. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Wainwright was a three time All Star and two time Gold Glove winner, finishing in the top three of the NL Cy Young vote four times. Between that, his three Cy Youngs, and eight All-Star appearances, hes probably punched his ticket even before getting to 200 wins (hes at 187). Enter your email below and we'll send you another email. Even so, five catchers including the younger and still-productive Buster Posey outrank him in the framing-inclusive version of my metric, and with an 80 wRC+ and 0.7 fWAR this year, plus plans to retire after 2022, he might not even catch Russell Martin (49.1) or Joe Mauer (49.3) in the rankings. Kimbrel has an option for next year, which I think is likely to be exercised, so he wont be a free agent until 2023. The pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, in which Wainwright went 5-3 with a 3.15 ERA in 10 starts, amounted to a fourth lost season for the right-hander, who missed all of 2011 recovering from Tommy John surgery and made just seven appearances (four starts) due to a torn Achilles in 2015 before he was limited to eight starts by right elbow inflammation in 2018.