Adam Wainwright on track for normal spring, normal season

Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright is over 10 months removed from Tommy John surgery and has not experienced any sort of setback. He recently shifted his rehab base to the team’s spring training facilities in Jupiter, Florida and is expecting to be at full strength by the time St. Louis’ other pitchers arrive.

Cardinals GM John Mozeliak has been saying that Wainwright will be limited to around 150-170 innings this season as a precautionary strategy, but the 30-year-old right-hander is hoping to defy that.

Here’s Wainwright, speaking Saturday at the Cardinals’ Winter Warm-Up (via MLB.com’s Jen Langosch):

“One hundred and fifty innings sounds like half a season to me,” said the 2010 NL Cy Young Award runner-up. “Any pitcher that is out there competing [his] tail off and is decent at what he does should throw more than 150 innings. That would never ever be a goal of mine. I kind of refrain from setting inning goals, especially this year.”

Wainwright posted a 2.42 ERA and 213/56 K/BB ratio across 230 1/3 innings in 2010, and a 2.63 ERA and 212/66 K/BB ratio over 233 innings in 2009. He’s averaged 199 innings per year since the ’07 season.