Cardinals set up Yadier Molina-Adam Wainwright milestone in best way possible

Yadier Molina is catching his 2,000th game on Wednesday afternoon, and the St. Louis Cardinals set it up that he could catch a certain starting pitcher.

In the rubber game of their three-game series against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday afternoon, Yadier Molina is catching his 2,000th game for the St. Louis Cardinals. He is the sixth catcher to catch that many games, and the first to do it with one team.

Molina started St. Louis’ first 10 games this season, before sitting out Tuesday night. With a day game to follow, a routine day off on Wednesday for the veteran catcher would’ve been easy to understand. So was Molina a little banged up? Was he ill? Sitting him was not performance-based, as Molina entered Wednesday hitting .353 with a .998 OPS in the early going this season.

The Cardinals knew what they were doing by sitting Yadier Molina

Andrew Knizner got the start behind the plate on Tuesday night against Washington. That set up Molina to catch his 2,000th game on Wednesday, with fellow veteran Adam Wainwright starting on the mound.

Wainwright is pitching his 396th regular season game on Wednesday. It is his 321st game with Molina as his catcher, with 1,826.2 innings thrown to Molina over those previous 321 games (five more innings Wednesday as of this writing). Molina is by far the catcher Wainwright has thrown to most, as easily expected since the two have been Cardinals together since 2006. Since his debut in June of 2004, Molina has caught 77 percent of the Cardinals’ regular season games (h/t to Mike Axisa of CBS Sports).

With knowing Wainwright was scheduled to start Wednesday, as Molina got close to his milestone game behind the plate, the Cardinals played it perfectly with a day off for their veteran catcher Tuesday night. These kind of moments are best shared with friends, and Molina got to share his 2,000th game with his longest-time teammate.