Adam Wainwright’s Injury Opens Door Wider for Cubs

Photo courtesy of Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

It’s uncouth to talk about the impact of Adam Wainwright’s torn Achilles on the respective playoff chances of the Cubs and Cardinals. It feels almost tasteless. Wainwright’s loss is the rare case in which I join Baseball Twitter in its ritual rending of garments over pitchers getting hurt. Arm injuries, at least those related to actual pitching, are an occupational hazard of being a pitcher. They interest me, but they don’t engender any great sadness. Wainwright’s case, though, like Mark Prior colliding with Marcus Giles or Prior getting hit in the elbow by a murderous line drive, is special, worthy of sympathy, and certainly no occasion on which to discuss wins and losses.

Except that obviously, it’s an occasion that absolutely demands discussion of wins and losses. It screams for it. The ace of a projected division winner—a three-to-two favorite to win, as of Monday, before Wainwright’s injury was accounted for by the Playoff Odds report—is gone for the year, and the team has only slightly better than the usual replacements on hand.

Here’s the change Wainwright’s loss effected in the PECOTA-projected rest-of-season projection for the Cardinals, as of Monday night (so, these projections include Monday’s game, which St. Louis lost, 4-1, and Tuesday’s, which they won):

PECOTA-Projected Rest-of-Season Performance, St. Louis Cardinals

The Cardinals are now projected to allow 27 more runs than they were projected to allow four days ago. That change is staggering, not least because the new projection pegs them for the same number of wins through the end of the year as their chief competitor, the Cubs. It’s not quite accurate to say that PECOTA saw Wainwright as the difference between the Cubs and the Cardinals; it’s better to say that it considered the Cardinals to have superior pitching depth. Without Wainwright, though, that gap is gone, and so is the gap between these two teams. On our Depth Charts page, the Cubs are now listed above the Cardinals, so the rounding error favors Chicago.

This makes the forthcoming race between these two teams utterly fascinating. They’re neck-and-neck now, and the push to get better on each side is going to get much more intense than we might have previously imagined. If one of these teams acquires a Cole Hamels or a similarly prized trade target, it won’t be without the other trying hard to outbid them. There are 17 games left between the two teams, and the margin between them is now so small that the club who wins more of those contests will have a huge leg up in the broader race.

I picked Chicago to win the NL Central before the season began. I was never of the opinion that Wainwright would be so good (or so invincible, though I certainly didn’t foresee this kind of injury) as to overcome the entropy of an aging Cardinals core, let alone the upswing of the Cubs’ fortunes on the strength of their accelerating youth movement. Most people disagreed, though, and for those who did, it’s permissible to consider Saturday night a turning point in the unfolding of season—however unwelcome a mechanism it took to do the turning.

Given that, let’s talk about the ways the Cubs could charge into the breach the Wainwright injury creates, and widen the opening they now have to compete for the division title.

“If they sensed a threat and they wanted to put their foot on the gas I think it’s almost unlimited what they could do,” Cubs President Theo Epstein said of the Cardinals in November. The article in which that quote first appeared presciently (or perhaps with a nod and a wink) suggested that the Cardinals would be a good fit for the Braves’ Jason Heyward—whom the team acquired four days after the piece ran. Epstein was talking mostly about St. Louis’s financial wherewithal, but even in terms of leveraging their farm system, there’s no question that the Cardinals have the resources necessary to reinforce themselves and make a win-now push.

What Epstein didn’t say, partly because he wasn’t asked but partly because it doesn’t need to be said, is that the Cubs can, too. Chicago will spend just over $120 million this season. That’s up almost 30 percent over last year’s payroll—a hike the proportions of which only four teams exceeded this winter—but it leaves a lot of room between their heads and the ceiling. The team also has a strong and deep farm system, which is astounding, given that their top three prospects from the preseasons lists have all graduated to the majors. That combination gives Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer plenty of flexibility come July. There will be no trade target outside their price range, in terms of talent or in terms of money.

Trades are obvious paths to improvement, though. I want to briefly touch on two ways that this team could look different in August than it does today, without anything outside the organization driving the change:

• Kyle Schwarber has an OPS north of 1.100 in his first 14 games at Double-A Tennessee. Nothing means anything in samples that small, but widening the lens, Schwarber is an impressive offensive prospect. With twice as much pro experience in 2014 as Kris Bryant had in his draft year, Schwarber has a case for advancing more quickly, and I think the Cubs should be aggressive. Schwarber is unlikely to force the issue the way Bryant did, but his bat should be ready to help (at least against right-handed pitching) well before the end of this season. Schwarber has caught or been the DH in all of his early games. Soon, he should start seeing weekly action in left field, as preparation for a bench role later in the year.
• Moving C.J. Edwards to relief before this season was wise. The Cubs might want to limit his innings somewhat even if he returns to starting in a few months, but just as importantly, the big-league bullpen looks like it will require reinforcement at some point. Edwards has walked more than a batter per inning pitched early this season, a reflection of a developmental hurdle that was foreseeable: he’s going to need some time to figure out a version of his delivery that works in relief. Edwards is famously (or infamously) rail-thin, and his delivery has never been the cleanest. Moving to relief should allow him to cut loose and tap into even nastier stuff than he has already shown, but the slightly increased violence of such a motion is certain to be harder to control and repeat. By having him take his lumps now, the Cubs are giving him the best possible chance to help the parent club down the stretch.

I mentioned that the Cardinals were clear favorites to win the NL Central before Wainwright went down, and it’s true: the Playoff Odds report gave them a 61.9-percent chance of winning the division as of Sunday night. With Wainwright’s injury accounted for, but without even considering the game the Cubs made up on Monday, that figure had dropped to 50.9 percent, and the Cubs had risen from roughly 23 percent to 30 percent, absorbing nearly all of what St. Louis lost. Add in that game the Cubs picked up Monday, and the Cubs now have a 35-percent shot of winning the division. A little extra weight on the gas pedal, and the Cubs have a very real chance to race past the Cardinals.