Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright Returning For One More Season

The 2023 season will be Adam Wainwright’s 18th with the Cardinals.

Rather than join Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina in retirement, Adam Wainwright is giving it one more go.

The 41-year-old Wainwright re-signed with the Cardinals on Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the 2023 season will be the right-hander’s 18th in St. Louis. It will also be his last in the major leagues, though he wants the focus to be on winning one more championship with the Cards.

“Long story short: Yes, this will be the last one,” Wainwright said, per MLB.com’s John Denton. “Everybody relax and let me pitch. Let me go out and perform and not freak out about it every single day, and let’s see what happens.”

Wainwright and the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006, his first full season in the majors. He thrived in the bullpen that year, but quickly took to the rotation in 2007.

A three-time All-Star, Wainwright is just five wins away from 200 for his career. He is 15 wins behind Hall of Famer Jesse Haines, who is second on the franchise’s all-time list. Bob Gibson, another Hall of Famer, leads the way with 251 victories.

Wainwright endured a losing season in 2022, going 11-12 over 32 outings. He posted a respectable 3.71 ERA, however, and his 191.2 innings were second on the Cardinals. But Wainwright struggled with his delivery and a dead arm late in the season. He won just two of his last six starts and recorded a 7.22 ERA over that closing stretch.

Wainwright made $17.5 million in 2022.

In other Cardinals news, team president John Mozeliak announced that pitching coach Mike Maddux and hitting coach Jeff Albert are stepping away from the team. St. Louis already lost bench coach Skip Schumaker, who became the Marlins’ manager, and reassigned bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd to a special assistant role.