NLCS: Adam Wainwright says his elbow is fine

Adam Wainwright insists that his elbow is fine after another short start on Saturday night as the St. Louis Cardinals lost Game 1 of the NLCS to the San Francisco Giants.

Another postseason start for Adam Wainwright, and another game in which he was forced to exit after less than five innings of work.

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What gives? Is the ace really going to keep telling us that his throwing elbow is fine?

That’s exactly what he’s going to do, despite another start in which he clearly was not the same pitcher as the Cardinals were dominated by Madison Bumgarner and the Giants and lost 3-0 in Game 1 of the NLCS.

From the St. Louis Post Dispatch, here is what Wainwright had to say about his Game 1 struggles:

"Wainwright insisted after the game that his outing Saturday was “100 percent better” than his faulty start in Game 1 of the NL division series. He tied Saturday’s troubles to mechanic issues, which he said were unrelated to soreness or tenderness in his right elbow.“I would have got a lot more out of what I could have got if I was in a better position to throw the ball,” Wainwright said. “Just everything was out of whack, out of timing. Now my arm is in a position (health-wise) that I can and should throw” a bullpen session."

Wainwright insists that he has identified a mechanical flaw that he will have fixed by the time he makes his next start.

That’s all fine, but for a guy who has been as steady as Wainwright for the last number of seasons, he will still have to go out and prove it before we can believe it. And until he does, it’s hard to believe that this is not injury-related because Wainwright has been as close to a sure thing as any pitcher in baseball this decade.

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