Adam Wainwright’s Hall of Fame case may be stronger than Cardinals fans think

Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina are true legends of the game, but St. Louis Cardinals fans know just how important their long-time ace, Adam Wainwright, was to the sustained success they had in the 2000s, 2010s, and into the early 2020s.

Wainwright was one of the best pitchers of his era, but even so, many Cardinals fans realized his Hall of Fame case was going to be more difficult than we would have hoped. Without a Cy Young to his name or iconic career milestones like 300 career wins or 3000 strikeouts, Wainwright faces a bit of an uphill battle voting wise compared to trends we've seen historically with Hall of Fame voting.

And yet, how voters have handled a recent addition to the ballot may actually indicate Wainwright has a stronger case than we originally thought.

How Hall of Fame voters handled Cole Hamels should make Adam Wainwright's case stronger than we thought

Two St. Louis sports media icons addressed the subject over on X the other day, as discussion broke out once again regarding Wainwright's chances at a Hall of Fame nod. Goold brought up that former Philadelphia Phillies ace Cole Hamels received 24% of the vote during his first year on the ballot, and he did so with only one World Series championship, four All-Star nods, and zero Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, or top four Cy Young finishes.

Wainwright, on the other hand, is a two-time World Series champion, three-time All-Star, finished runner-up in Cy Young voting twice and third in voting another two times, is a two-time Gold Glover and one-time Silver Slugger award winner, and has 200 career wins compared to Hamel's 163.

If you put all of that together, plus the fact that Wainwright has some iconic postseason moments and was one of the most important pieces of a sustained stretch of great teams in St. Louis, it's easy to see how Wainwright should garner even more support than Hamels has so far.

Wainwright's accolades should be even stronger than that. If you go back and look at the 2009 NL Cy Young voting, he received more first-place votes than the winner, Tim Lincecum, but his teammate Chris Carpenter split some of the vote, causing neither Cardinal to win. Wainwright really should have at least one Cy Young award under his belt, and he also missed the entire 2011 season and most of the 2016 season, two years right in the middle of his absolute prime as a player.

The criteria traditionally relied on by Hall of Fame voters to decide whether or not a starting pitcher is worthy of induction are going to continue to be tested over the next decade. Wainwright is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and if voters continue to rely heavily on some of those older benchmarks, he may never be voted in. But due to Wainwright's career partially overlapping with major shifts in how the game is managed and starting pitchers are deployed, he and his colleagues likely need to be graded differently moving forward.

I believe Wainwright is a Hall of Famer, but it's going to be a tough sell to get him in, unless the voting trend we see with Hamels is a sign of things to come.