Couple of thoughts about yesterday's game before I move on to my topic of choice this morning:

• I really want to poke holes in what Thompson did yesterday because I think, on balance, that's the absolute best kind of game he's going to have, but . . . . . well, I just can't.  Not only was he striking batters out, he was striking out the likes of Tulowitzki, Helton and Holliday.  He also had 10 groundouts against 2 flyouts.  This is exactly the kind of game Thompson enthusiasts should point to when talking about him.  The only thing that I'd note was that a) his command started to deteriorate towards the very end and b) I still wonder how long he can survive in the league with, basically, one pitch.  On the days when he can't command his sinker, he's sunk.
• Skip Schumaker's throw was, perhaps, the single most significant defensive play of the game.  It's nice to have a plus defender in left and at the very least, I hope TLR feels comfortable making defensive replacements for Chris Duncan late in games where the Cardinals have the lead.  Skip isn't hitting yet but he's drawing walks -- the hits will come; I wasn't sure the walks would or will continue to.
• Anthony Reyes.  That is all. (Here's BA's scouting report of him from 2005.  It's amazing how perception has changed.)
• It was especially encouraging to see Troy Glaus collect a pair of hits.  One that was about 2-3 feet short of being a HR and another hard hit line drive for a single in the third.
• The key to yesterday's game offensively was letting Ubaldo Jimenez beat himself.  He walked 5 batters in 5 innings.  He's an outstanding young pitcher who still has shoddy command and the Cardinal hitters took advantage of that.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a hearty approval of the contract extension the Cardinals gave Adam Wainwright.  I laid out my reasons with some behind the scenes math and the fact that the contract contains two club options (although I believe there are vesting clauses associated with them as well -- if he reaches those clauses, however, he's probably worth the money anyway).  I made a rough estimate of his future value to base the salary on.  One thing I didn't do was forecast a significant improvement of any kind for Wainwright in those numbers but I certainly could have.

It's been mentioned before but Wainwright's 2007 numbers after the All-Star Break are significantly better than before.  Not just the shallow numbers like WHIP and ERA; he was striking out more batters, walking fewer and allowing fewer homeruns after the break.  The result was a 4.66 ERA in 102 innings pre-ASB and a 2.71 ERA in 99 innings post-ASB.  Beyond that though, there's a less statistical reason that I'm a fan of Wainwright moving forward.  He reminds me of Chris Carpenter.  Actually, he has for a while.  (Please ignore the part where I was reading Eric Karabell and touting Jason Schmidt in my signature.  As an aside, I totally missed the call on Schmidt's shoulder.)  I made that comment watching Wainwright pitch out of the pen during 2006 so I was, unsurprisingly, unaware of his full arsenal that he now employs on a regular basis.

And it's a well-varied array of pitches that he employs.  Fangraphs has pitch data sorted out for us now, which is awesome, and we can see how often Carpenter and Wainwright throw each of their pitches:

The first number in each column is how often they threw the pitch and the second number is the average velocity.  I'm using Carpenter's composite data for 2005 & 2006 (with a hint of 2007) and Wainwright's 2007 since he was a reliever in 2006.  If you look at the top starters throughout the rest of the NL Central (Zambrano, Oswalt, Harang, Sheets, Gorzelanny), you'll see that they all employ their fastballs far more often -- over 60% in each case.  Carpenter and Wainwright each utilize essentially 4 pitches.  They both use curveballs as their primary secondary offering and their best offspeed pitch.  Wainwright has a changeup where Carpenter prefers a cutter but those are pretty similar repetoires.  The velocities for each pitch are remarkably close as well (ignoring the cutter/changeup disparity, which we'd expect).  We do see that Carpenter has a but more zip on all his pitches.  Through the power of PitchF/X data we can also see that Wainwright has a very consistent release point (another desirable trait).

It's not really a fair comparison to put a 3rd year pitcher (2nd year starter) up against a Cy Young winner but I'll do it anyway.  I'm not anticipating Wainwright to approximate Carpenter's peak; I'm merely pointing out the similarities that have always evoked a Carpenter-Wainwright comp in my mind.  We can extend the comparison further to physical traits as well.  They're both 6'6-ish around 220-230 pounds and utilize their height on the mound to pitch downhill.  They were both first round picks -- Carpenter was the 15th overall by the Blue Jays while Wainwright was the 29th by the Braves.  They both excelled after being traded from their drafting organization.  We'll have to wait years to see what the end results are but the preliminary similarities are there.