MILWAUKEE — While Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina continued their side-by-side walk toward history with a tidy round number and a wink of nostalgia, it didn’t take long to show they had no intention of living in the past.
Not when they could showcase the present.
In his first start as both a 40-something and reigning National League pitcher of the month, Wainwright delivered six shutout innings as the Cardinals built a 10-run lead before Milwaukee figured out a way to sneak two runs on the right-hander in the seventh. Wainwright and Molina became the fourth battery in baseball history to make 300 starts together, and they marked the occasion with a 15-4 drubbing of the best team in the NL Central at its home, American Family Field.
Wainwright provided 6 1/3 superb innings to get it started. Molina delivered the punctuation with a grand slam in the top of the ninth.
Nolan Arenado had his first multi-homer game as a Cardinal and two of the team’s six total homers that vaulted the Cardinals to an impenetrable lead, not that Wainwright (14-7) needed much. The right-hander allowed two or fewer runs for the seventh time in his previous eight starts and 18th time this season. Arenado provided that many runs on his first swing as he lofted a moonshot into the AmFam seats well beyond the left-field wall for the Cardinals’ 2-0 lead. He added a leadoff homer in the third to greet reliever Justin Topa as he took over for starter Freddy Peralta.
The Cardinals’ win inched them closer in a division race Milwaukee has nearly won, but it gained a game in the NL wild-card race on Cincinnati. The Cardinals trail by 1 1/2 games.
In his 353rd start in the majors, Wainwright set up to throw his first pitch of the first inning to Molina for the 300th time in the regular season.
Only three other pairs of players have done that, and none have in nearly five decades. Molina and Wainwright are within reach of the all-time record, held by Detroit’s Mickey Lolich and Bill Freehan. They’ll need another healthy season to surpass the Tigers’ 324. Wainwright is pitching like that season is a given, and he told the Post-Dispatch that setting the record, claiming along with a teammate he calls “brother” is an appealing reason to pitch in 2022, too.
While all the fanfare on one side of the ballpark was about the shared careers of Molina and Wainwright and capturing the details of their 300th game, on other the Brewers had a hype video set about coming home to their ballpark after winning three of four in San Francisco. Kolten Wong was prominently featured in the video but not in the lineup as he started paternity leave to be present when his wife Alissa Wong gives birth to their first child.
A small moment, out of sight of video cameras offered a prelude to one of the nights ahead.
Arenado spotted a young woman in the crowd surrounded by Cardinals and Brewers gear, but she was wearing his Colorado Rockies jersey. He motioned to her, got help to get her attention, and then had her come down, near the field, so he could give her his BP bat.
He grabbed a new one for the game and went to work.
In addition to his 28th and 29th homers for his 21st career multi-homer game, Arenado sent two other pitches to the warning track near the deepest part of center field. After Arenado’s second homer, Harrison Bader hit the three-run homer that sent the Cardinals to an 8-0 lead. Tyler O’Neill followed in the seventh with a two-run comet that landed well beyond right-center-field fence at the stadium formerly known as Miller Park.
While the name of the ballpark has changed, the setting was a fitting one for history.
The Brewers’ screw-top home was the site of the first pitch Wainwright ever threw to Molina, and it also was the place Wainwright wrenched his foot and forever altered his career.
Almost 16 years ago, on Sept. 23, 2005, Wainwright, a September callup, entered a game against Milwaukee for the seventh inning. Behind the plate was Molina. The lanky right-hander retired the side in order on 13 pitches for a perfect inning. Fast-forward nearly 10 years and four top-three finishes in Cy Young Award voting, Wainwright was back in Milwaukee, an ace in full, and pitching arguably as well as he ever had. Shortly before his start on April 25, 2015, at Miller Park, Wainwright described the sensation of pitching at his best as conducting a symphony.
He could set his rhythm with the sinker.
Tease the score with some cutters, a little change of beat with a change-up.
Give the crowd what it wants with just enough curveball until bringing the whole orchestra of options together for a crescendo.
He said he could hear the music of pitching in his head.
During an at-bat to lead off the fifth inning, Wainwright broke from the box to run out a pop up. The Achilles tendon in his left foot ruptured. He hobbled off the field. That day the music ended. Wainwright would miss the next five appearances and appear three times late in the season — all in relief, all in losses. In the years to come, he would trace other changes to his delivery, physical issues he had, and even ultimately the stress on his elbow that put him on the brink of retirement to what happened after the severe foot injury. It aged him.
During the previous 12 months, Wainwright has often said that he feels younger going into his 40s than he did weathering those mid-30s.
The music is back.
The oldest active player in the National League shrank his ERA to less than 3.00. Wainwright nearly split his pitch count in thirds, turning to the sinker 33 times, and calling on the cutter almost as many times (28) as he flipped a curveball (22). He got five swings and misses on the cutter along, two each on the curve and change-up, though he only three 11 of those. His velocity topped out at 90.5 mph, and for giggles he mixed in a pitch that Baseball Savant classified separately from his other breaking balls.
It called the 62.4-mph pitch a “slow curve.”
Wainwright got a swinging strike in the third inning on a 72.4-mph curveball, and in the fourth inning he got a called strike on an 89.8-mph sinker to Christian Yelich. As any elite pitcher does, Wainwright tested the elasticity of the strike zone and found it to be as comfortable as sweatpants. He eased a fastball in on Yelich, tickling the black of the plate, for a called strike zone for that strikeout. Yelich fumed — and within an inning he had been ejected for criticizing the umpire from the Brewers’ dugout.
Wainwright had a 10-0 lead when he left the game and the bases loaded to the bullpen in the seventh inning. He got the groundballs to get out of the inning, but one took a hard, sharp hop, and the infield overall had some hesitancy making plays in that one inning. T. J. McFarland pitched around an error to strand one of the runners he inherited but keep the earned runs Wainwright permitted to one.
Neither of the runs on Wainwright’s line scored while he was in the game.
