(Jupiter, FL) For the third time in as many outings, Michael Wacha turned in a strong performance as he delivered three innings of shutout baseball to help the St. Louis Cardinals to a 9-3 victory this afternoon over the Washington Nationals.
“Yeah we like nine runs,” began Mike Matheny in his postgame. “I like our chances if we keep doing that all year. To me, it was Michael. He was so good today. He was just timed up.”
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Timed up and clocking in at 96mph before the radar on the scoreboard went out. Wacha has reached those kinds of speed before, but could this kind of consistent speed be a result of his off-season workout routine?
“I don’t care what it is,” stated Matheny. “I think in his mind it needs to be that the things he’s done have allowed him to be strong enough to do what he is doing. That’s not something he’d necessarily change. That was his goal–to do something a little bit different and to get different results as far as strength goes. We just want him to stay the course.”
Besides his velocity, Wacha had noticeable movement on the changeup.
“It had good action on it today,” he agreed. “It’s coming along nice and working well with the fastball. That’s exactly what I want.”
“I honestly think that whenever the fastball is working down in the zone, you can work the changeup off of it, you can work the cutter off of it. But whenever the fastball is up in the zone, whenever they see a changeup down in the zone, they’re going to sit and not really offer at it. I try to establish working down in the zone and working other pitches off of it.”
Those other pitches included his curveball and cutter.
“They had good spin on them,” said Wacha. “I threw some cutters in to lefties, away to righties for strikes. It’s coming along nice. It’s still a pitch I’m working on, for sure, and getting command on it, but overall, it’s coming along nice.”
And one of his three strikeouts came on the curve.
“Yeah, I did have a strikeout on it,” said Wacha. “I just try to get the right spin on it and try to work down in the zone with it. I think he might have been expecting a heater there, so if you get good spin on it and work down in the zone, you get weak contact or swing and misses.”
After he finished his pitching, Wacha sought out strength coach Pete Prinzi to get more of a workout. A post-workout shake was in his hand as he answered questions before leaving–all part of his continued efforts to maintain the health and condition he’s built his body up to.
“It’s so I can feel good later in the season,” said Wacha, not getting caught up in his early success of spring. “I want to continue to work on the command of the pitches to get them to where they need to be and keep working out here in the bullpens in between starts and staying strong in the weight room, on top of the arm care. Keep moving forward.”
photo credit: STLBaseballWeekly.com
