Cardinals right-hander Adam Wainwright, who is set to start the National League Championship Series opener Saturday night against San Francisco, has dismissed concerns about his right elbow.
Wainwright skipped a start in June with a sore elbow. He also dealt with what was described as a "dead arm" period in August. He was clobbered for six runs on 11 hits in 4 1/3 innings in his lone NL Division Series outing. That matched his shortest stint of the season. He even admitted elbow discomfort in that performance, but he has expressed no worries.
"I can be very honest about this because I've been through it," he told MLB.com. "When I took a game off [in June], I aggravated my elbow, and it's the backside of my elbow. So the elbow-fearing world can know it's not my ligament. ... And after that, it goes on the mend and gets better and better progressively.
"The other day, I aggravated that same spot on the backside of my elbow, and now I'm on the mend, and I can feel something. I'm very confident about it because I felt that before, the same exact thing. I was able to recover very well from it. I have no doubts going into [Game 1]."