So About That Adam Wainwright Elbow

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Adam Wainwright will not start tonight against the New York Mets.

“I think this is more precautionary than anything else. It was something that we just didn’t want to push if we didn’t have to, and he agreed.”

John Mozeliak said so Saturday night. And that’s reasonable enough. It’s June, not September or October. The Cardinals appear to be stabilizing a bit coming off a sweep of the Washington Nationals. Missing a turn in the rotation isn’t the end of the world.

His next start, though?

It would be Saturday against the Phillies. And no determination has been made on if he’ll go or not.

And that’s when we’ll know if the Cardinals were truly taking the cautious route or if this is something a bit more serious than they originally let on.

Let’s face it, the Cardinals aren’t very good at selling injury updates. They don’t subscribe to the ‘under-promise and over-deliver’ mantra. Joe Kelly has missed 2 months already from an injury that we were told would only cost him a couple of weeks.

So when they tell us something is “precautionary”, I think any Cardinals observer is going to be a bit leery. When that precaution involves the best pitcher on the team? Super-leery.

Let’s hope Wainwright is fine.

He had a cortisone shot last week and has been quoted as saying he feels much better. An extended breather is probably going to become more of the norm in baseball for pitchers as arm injuries continue to rise in aggregate across all levels of the game.

We’ll save the paper bag for when Mo gives us an update (WED or THU I’d suspect) on the Saturday start.

Photo: Amber City

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