Off to rocky start, Cards’ Wainwright gains first win with help from Arenado and friends

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Off to rocky start, Cards’ Wainwright gains first win with help from Arenado and friends

Wed, 05/05/2021 - 04:04
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May 4—Adam Wainwright forced in a run Monday night with a bases-loaded walk and another with a bases loaded hit batsman. He allowed a leadoff walk to score. And he permitted a two-run homer on an 0-2 pitch, begging the question of who was wearing his jersey?

The 39-old Cardinals righthander, pitching in his 399th big league game, probably never has done all of those things in the same game, let alone in the first three innings.

But, after missing the Cardinals’ weekend trip to Pittsburgh when he landed on the COVID-19 list because of contact tracing with somebody —everybody else — in his family who had the virus, Wainwright was far from the same pitcher who a week before had pitched a complete-game loss to Philadelphia.

“Nothing that you mentioned (in Monday’s game) has anything to do with success. At all. Ever,” Wainwright said.

He did pass the 1,000 strikeout plateau as the first Cardinal to do it at one home ball park for his career at Busch Stadium III (he had none at Busch II in two games). But, more importantly, “the boys picked me up tonight. They did it because I did not. I was terrible,” Wainwright said.

Nolan Arenado’s threerun homer with two out in the third, after he tipped a 1-2 pitch to stay alive, caught the Cardinals up. And back-to-back doubles by Paul DeJong and Tyler O’Neill later in the inning erased a three-run Mets lead and pushed the Cardinals to a season-high fifth consecutive victory, 6-5, over the New York Mets.

After his abominable first three frames, Wainwright straightened to pitch scoreless ball into the sixth and then the Cardinals’ bullpen took over. Wainwright’s first win of the season after three defeats — “it wasn’t my best performance,” — was preserved, in order, by Genesis Cabrera, Ryan Helsley, Giovanny Gallegos and Alex Reyes, who posted his eighth save in eight opportunities and still hasn’t been scored on in 14 1/3 innings covering 14 games.

The relievers didn’t allow a hit over the final 3 1/3 innings and Reyes refused to let the lights go out on the Cardinals’ run to victory when, in fact, they went off for an instant at Busch as Pete Alonso batted with two out and a man on in the ninth inning.

As the crowd of 12,686 emitted a collective groan, the lights came right back on and, after Alonso walked, Reyes retired Dominic Smith on a fly to left to end the game.

The Cardinals’ victory pulled them even with Milwaukee at the top of the National League Central Division. But Arenado said the ending was a “little bizarre. That was weird. Thank God for the new LED lights that we have. You just turn them on and off whenever you want, I guess,” Arenado said.

What happened in the ninth inning was almost as bizarre as Wainwright playing Mr. Mom for most of this past week after all five of his children and his overworked wife, Jenny, all were struck with the virus.

After Wainwright pitched his complete game on Monday, he missed the rest of the games with Philadelphia and, of course, didn’t go to Pittsburgh.

“It was a little different,” he said. “And this goes out to all the mothers out there. Especially when you have as many kids as I do (and his wife) does so much. You know that, but you don’t know it until you have to do all the stuff.

“Several times at the end of the night — folding laundry after doing my seventh load of laundry — all of a sudden (the kids) are saying, ‘Dad, we’re hungry. It’s dinner time.’

“And so you eat stuff that maybe I wouldn’t have eaten before. The kids were loving it. I was out there (Monday) dragging my behind all night and I’m sure that played a little bit into it. But no excuse for how I pitched.

“There was a time this last week when I went to the hotel — my whole crew had it — and my wife texted me and said, ‘I can’t go anymore without you being here,’ so that’s why I had to go home.

“She’s a really tough girl but when she said that, I knew I had to go home,” said Wainwright, who had been vaccinated completely.

“My family at home is No. 1. I had to make sure I was being a good dad and a good husband before I was being a good baseball player.”

Wainwright reported that all five children rebounded quickly but Jenny “took it really hard. But she’s finally turned the corner. I’m glad I was able to help out.”

Manager Mike Shildt said, simply, “Family first.”

Harrison Bader, just back in the lineup after missing nearly the entire first month with a sore throwing arm, missed a cutoff man, leading to two New York runs in the second. But he helped make it up for it by walloping a 3-1 cutter from former Southeast Missouri State pitcher Joey Lucchesi an estimated 450 feet into the left-centerfield bleachers behind the Mets’ bullpen in the bottom of the second.

Wainwright compounded his early failures by surrendering a 414-foot homer on an 0-2 fastball to Kevin Pillar in the third and it was 5-2.

Lucchesi retired the first two men he faced in the Cardinals’ third but they were the final two. Dylan Carlson singled to right and Paul Goldschmidt singled to center where Pillar missed on a diving attempt. After Arenado survived the near strikeout, he ripped a Lucchesi sinker for his fifth homer of the season and his second curtain call.

“I hit it pretty good,” said Arenado.

The pitch before that he hit just enough.

“I definitely nicked it,” said Arenado. “I’m happy Mark (home plate umpire Mark Carlson) heard it. There was no way he saw it but he heard it, too. Even (catcher Tomas) Nido knew I fouled it off also.

“Thank God, (Carlson) heard that, because that wouldn’t have been good.”

The home run was the Cardinals’ fifth three-run homer in their past five games and eighth of the season. They had only three homers with two men on in a 58-game season in 2020.

After the teams combined for 11 runs in the first three innings, they didn’t score in the final six.

And after the game, the Mets dismissed their two hitting coaches, Chili Davis and assistant Tom Slater.

Meanwhile, Wainwright said how thankful he was that he has been able to pitch in front of the same body of fans for more than 16 seasons.

“I hope I can keep doing it, striking guys out and bring another World Series home.” Wainwright said.