Cardinals Rumors: Wainwright concern, Mozeliak clarification, fan favorite trade?

Cardinals Rumors: What is wrong with Adam Wainwright?

Adam Wainwright had “one of the worst starts” of his career in London against the Cubs. He sounded downright distressed and downtrodden in the locker room afterward, and has since deleted his Twitter account. Should fans be concerned?

“I’m pretty sad about it, honestly,” Wainwright said, per the Athletic. “I pitched terrible trying to make Cardinals fans, but we didn’t make any today because of me. That whole game was my fault. I pitched terrible, I put our team in a bad spot and we lost the game because of me.”

To understand Waino’s dilemma, we have to go back to the beginning of the season. Rather than retire with the likes of longtime catcher Yadier Molina or MLB legend Albert Pujols, Wainwright opted to come back for another season. That has not worked out well for him, as the Cardinals are last in the NL Central and he, personally, has not been his steady self in the rotation. As FanSided’s Alicia de Artola noted on Saturday, sadly it looks for now like Wainwright made a mistake coming back at all:

"“Wainwright tried to hold off the clock but its clearly caught up to him. It’s no surprise for a 41-year-old have his game decline. It’s just a shame he didn’t hang up his cleats before it got to this point. Now Oli Marmol and company need to have a serious conversation about Wainwright’s place in the rotation. The current status quo isn’t cutting it.”"

The current status quo is rather awful. After the game, even Oli Marmol acknowledged that Wainwright “did not have it” that day. The curious part about all of this is that in his prior start against the New York Mets, Wainwright looked pretty good, giving up just three runs in over six innings pitched. He “found his curveball,” as he mentioned at the time. But on Saturday, nothing worked for him. His cutter and curveball wouldn’t break, and the fastball location was off while the average velocity was way down.

This…really isn’t the Wainwright we’ve come to expect the last few years, which begs the obvious question, what can be done to fix him?

These are strange days in St. Louis, and some rare struggles from Wainwright makes us feel like we’re in the Upside Down.