Adam Wainwright has picked up in 2010 right where he left off from his 2009 Cy Young campaign, with a hearty 7.80 K/9 and a superb 4.33 K/BB over his first two outings. As fans will recall, Waino didn’t begin 2009 quite as well, struggling with control problems that he attributed to his release. Let’s revisit the Cardinal righthander’s release point, courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
First, we’ll review Wainwright’s release point from a couple of different games in 2009: April 29, in which he walked a season-high five batters and struck out a season-low two, and Sept. 26, in which he struck out 11 and walked only one:
As we noted last year, Wainwright moved his release point down and over, ever so slightly. Now let’s check out his release so far in 2010:
It’s difficult to see, but the release points of Wainwright’s two 2010 starts are somewhere in-between his early, bad starts in 2009 and strong, late ones. In particular, while he’s not releasing from as high as his April 29, 2009 start, he’s not quite as far over horizontally as he was in September. Also, you may notice that in his home-opener start, his release point appeared to vary quite a bit (notice the scattering).
What does it mean? Perhaps not a lot. It does appear that if the slight — and we’re talking merely inches — modification in release point that Wainwright effected last year was indeed the impetus for his success, then he seems to have carried it over into the new season, with similar results. It could simply be that good pitchers will find a way to get the most of their stuff, regardless of their release points. We’ll keep an eye on it as the season goes on.
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