Earlier in the season I wrote about injury concerns I had for Adam Wainwright but no one could have seen this coming. He left his last start early after seemingly hurting his ankle busting out of the batters box on a bunt play. Everyone’s worst fears were confirmed yesterday when it was officially announced Wainwright had a torn Achilles tendon and would miss the rest of the 2015 season. It’s obviously a huge blow so let’s examine what losing Adam Wainwright means for the Cardinals?
Adam Wainwright is the Cardinals best starting pitcher. In the 25 innings he pitched this season he accumulated a 1.44 ERA, 2.00 FIP, 2.85 xFIP, and a 0.8 fWAR. For the rest of this season ZiPS had Wainwright projected for 182 IP, 2.92 ERA, 2.83 FIP, and 4.0 fWAR.
Lance Lynn is their next best pitcher with 22.1 IP, 3.63 ERA, 2.41 FIP, 3.19 xFIP, and a 0.6 fWAR. For the rest of this season ZiPS has Lynn projected for 172 IP, 3.28 ERA, 3.26, and a 2.9 fWAR.
This illustrates just how much of a drop their is from the Cardinals best starting pitcher to their next best (who is still very good). The real question is how much they lose going from Adam Wainwright to the pitcher who will replace him.
This is a more difficult question to answer. As of right now we don’t know exactly who will get the first opportunity to take over Wainwright’s spot in the rotation. We also don’t know how long that individual will keep that spot. There seem to be several candidates: Carlos Villanueva, Tyler Lyons, and Tim Cooney.
Carlos Villanueva is the veteran of that group with parts of 10 major league seasons under his belt. Most of them haven’t been very good though. He’s the classic long man/spot starter that has a long career because he’s just good enough (or not bad enough) to keep from getting sent down to the minors. I doubt he’s the Cardinals first choice and he’s certainly not their best choice.
Tyler Lyons and Tim Cooney strike me as very similar options. They’re both left handed starters currently pitching in the AAA rotation. Lyons threw 36.2 innings for the Cardinals major league club so that could give him the slight edge.
ZiPS seems to slightly favor Lyons as well. It has him projected for 82 IP, 3.64 ERA, 3.60 FIP, and 1.2 fWAR. ZiPS projects Cooney for 16 IP, 3.90 ERA, 3.91 FIP, and 0.2 fWAR. Using some fuzzy math we can estimate that in 164 IP Lyons would be worth approximately 2.4 fWAR and Cooney 2.0 fWAR in 160 IP.
My guess is Tyler Lyons gets the first shot at the major league rotation. For the sake of argument let’s assume that 2.4 fWAR is correct for Lyons. Wainwright was projected for 4.0 fWAR so that’s a loss of 1.6 fWAR or close to 2 games.
That might not seem like a big deal but the Pirates and Cubs are right on the Cardinals’ heels. As of writing this, FanGraphs Depth Charts currently has the Cardinals projected for 89 wins and the Pirates and Cubs both with 86. Baseball Prospectus has the Cardinals finishing with 89 wins, the Cubs 88 wins, and the Pirates 83 wins. These projections are close enough that it’s not hard to see any one of these three teams capture the NL Central crown.
The drop from Wainwright to Lyons is significant. But that speaks more to how good Wainwright is than anything negative about Lyons. A lot of teams would be happy to have had Lyons in their rotation from the start of the season. That’s thing about the Cardinals. No matter what happens, they always seem to have someone waiting in the wings. I still expect the Cardinals to play in the postseason. They just might have to play their way in via the Wild Card.
