When the St. Louis Cardinals take the field on Opening Day against the division rival Chicago Cubs on April 5, there is a chance Adam Wainwright won't be on the mound.
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Wainwright is dealing with an abdominal strain and will not pitch in any exhibition games until mid-March, which could mean he won't be set to take the ball on Opening Day at Wrigley Field.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny acknowledged that the team may push back Wainwright's first start of the season.
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"That's always an option," Matheny said Friday, according to ESPN. "We just have to see where we are and what it looks like, too."
Wainwright can still throw without discomfort, but won't be weightlifting or running for the next couple of days and he expressed relief over the news not being worse than anticipated.
"It's the news that we thought we were going to hear but it was relieving to hear it -- to know that there isn't something else in there going on that should cause some concern," Wainwright said.
Matheny hasn't committed to a date for Wainwright to play in a spring training game, but there was a plan in place to scale back on his spring starts coming out of offseason elbow surgery anyway.
"Everybody was saying, 'You need to scale back your innings in spring training,'" Wainwright said. "Well, God just naturally found a way to make that happen without ticking me off."
The Cardinals are looking for Wainwright to start three or four spring training games before announcing him ready for the season and he expects to improve over the next couple of days.
"Everything that I've heard is that in four or five days I should feel dramatically better and they can start kind of bringing me along slow to get back into a normal daily routine," Wainwright said.
Wainwright started for the National League in the All-Star Game this past July and is coming off of another solid season at the top of the St. Louis rotation.
Wainwright is coming off of a season where he ranked tied for second in the MLB with 20 wins and finished third in the NL in ERA (2.38) and WHIP (1.03) while tossing six complete games and adding three shutouts in 2014.
St. Louis is coming off of a campaign where it won the NL Central for the second straight season with a 90-72 record before falling to the eventual World Series champion San Francisco Giants in four games in the NLCS.
Wainwright, 33, went 0-1 in the 2014 postseason with a 5.63 ERA.
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