On Tuesday, September 12, Adam Wainwright won his 199th career game. He allowed two runs in five innings, walking three batters and striking out three batters; these are not great statistics, but he did get 11 ground balls, which is impressive enough. Of his 199 career wins, this was certainly not his greatest triumph nor his least deserving victory. But few games have more typified the objective silliness that is Adam Wainwright’s pursuit of 200 career victories.

With two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Adam Wainwright and the Cardinals held a one-run lead. Because it was the fifth inning, there was, barring injury, no realistic chance that he would be removed from the game, so that his eligibility for the win would be preserved in a season where this pursuit is one of the few remaining storylines worth following. If Wainwright were to achieve the optimal result, recording the inning’s final out (which he did), he would almost certainly be pulled, as the Cardinals would have the opportunity to give superior relief pitchers a chance to preserve the win, as the Cardinals were assured holding at least a one-run lead entering the bottom of the sixth inning. And yet had he allowed a run or more, he would probably not be pulled unless the Cardinals re-took the lead in the top of the sixth inning. If giving a pitcher a larger inning workload as a direct result of his allowing more runs seems irrational to you, I doubt anybody within the Cardinals organization would candidly disagree.

Arguing that the pitcher win is a flawed statistic in 2023 feels akin to making an impassioned case for the existence of gravity–yes, you’re on the right side, but a consensus has so clearly formed that to do so feels unnecessary. Adam Wainwright’s last start underscored that even if there remain fans and sports media who place analytical value on the win, teams do not.

The central flaw of the win as a statistic was one I figured out in elementary school before I was ever exposed to sabermetric research–it is a statistic highly contingent upon the contributions of others. Even if allowing runs were fully attributable to pitchers, wins would still require the pitcher’s team to score at least one run. Particularly over a large sample size, there is a reasonable correlation between pitcher wins and pitcher quality, but the same can also be said about many other more descriptive statistics.

Whether Adam Wainwright gets to 200 or more victories for his career should have little bearing on his legacy as a Major League Baseball pitcher or as a St. Louis Cardinals legend. Regardless, Adam Wainwright will be a mortal lock for the Cardinals Hall of Fame who will probably pick up some courtesy votes for Cooperstown before quietly being removed from the ballot. 200 wins is not, in the grand scheme of Major League Baseball, an outrageously rare accomplishment–121 guys have gotten there, and when Jon Lester reached the 200 victory mark two years ago as a Cardinal, it barely made any waves beyond its impact in solidifying the Cardinals’ postseason position. Barring something truly miraculous, Adam Wainwright, who ranks third in Cardinals history in pitching wins behind Bob Gibson and Jesse Haines, will finish his career ranked third in Cardinals history in pitching wins behind Bob Gibson and Jesse Haines.

The reason 200 wins matters is for the simple fact that Adam Wainwright seems to care about 200 wins. It is a thing that Adam Wainwright wants to do, and even if the Cardinals do not need to appease Adam Wainwright’s preferences for future seasons, there is some sentimental value to creating a benchmark to pursue during what is otherwise a lost season. I watched one batter of last weekend’s series against the Philadelphia Phillies, and as somebody who wants the Milwaukee Brewers to win the National League Central over the Chicago Cubs or Cincinnati Reds I will borderline be rooting for the Brewers to win on Tuesday and Wednesday, but tonight, I will be zoned in and committed to rooting for Adam Wainwright, not because winning game #200 significantly impacts his legacy, but because there is still value in accomplishing a goal, even if that goal may not seems especially important as an outsider.

While the pitching win is a silly metric in terms of its analytical value, I have enjoyed caring about it as a storytelling device. Although he has been far from the best player on the 2023 St. Louis Cardinals, Adam Wainwright is unquestionably the protagonist of the Cardinals’ season, and like the dual retirement tours of Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina last season, most of that stems from their past. By the standards of previous generations, Adam Wainwright is not a historic workhorse, but he will likely represent the final generation of starting pitchers where going deep enough to at the very least be eligible for a win is considered the standard.

For a franchise as historic and successful as the St. Louis Cardinals, it does seem a little strange that Adam Wainwright could reasonably be called the second-greatest starting pitcher in its history. Passing Adam Wainwright is an attainable goal for future St. Louis Cardinals starting pitchers, but the thing that truly defines Adam Wainwright’s place in Cardinals history is not his greatness, though he was great–it is that, improbably, in the mid-aughts and beyond, the Cardinals managed to produce the kind of player that fits within an otherwise outdated continuum. Giving a pre-game celebration, as the Cardinals are planning on doing before the final home game of the 2023 season, is the sort of thing that happens for great players; letting the guy perform a post-game concert is the sort of thing that happens for the truly beloved. And the beloved Cardinal wants this. And I want it for him.