LOS ANGELES — The curveball doesn’t feel like it’s spinning with the usual wickedness, the cutter seems dull, the sinker flat. Certain there isn’t a physical reason for the lack of familiar, zippy life on his pitches, Adam Wainwright knows of only one way to revive them and his September.
Keep on pitching.
The veteran starter and the Cardinals agreed that the best way through Wainwright’s persisting “dead arm” sensation this month was to make a start Sunday, as scheduled, but with a limited pitch count. By the end of three innings he’d almost exhausted it, and hours later he still was exasperated by an inability to have his execution match his health and his performance meet his expectations of the moment.