Yesterday, for the first time since 2005, Adam Wainwright was not donning a St. Louis Cardinals uniform at the Cardinals’ home opener. After nearly two decades in St. Louis, the native Georgian has moved from his Hall of Very Good career as a Major League Baseball pitcher to new work, one a relatively conventional post-playing career path and the other fairly uncommon. Wainwright, who has long oscillated with ease between serious competitor and utter goofball, has received acclaim in sporadic broadcasts with Fox during playoff games, and he will take on a more consistent role now that he will not have his day job. And less predictably, Adam Wainwright has picked up a guitar and ventured into the world of music.

Adam Wainwright is hardly the first baseball player/musician. New York Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams, a Wainwright-like figure in Yankees lore, is an accomplished jazz guitarist who has been nominated for a Latin Grammy. There was outfielder Lee Maye (successful career as a doo-wop singer, less successful career as a MLB player) and there was Dick Allen (the same as Maye but in reverse). Former reliever Scott Radinsky sang with the California punk band Pulley, and most notably in terms of music, Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Charley Pride spent six seasons as a pitcher for the Memphis Red Sox and Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues.

I am primarily a baseball writer (well, I guess I’m primarily the job I get health insurance through, but in terms of internet writing presence), but I also dabble in music writing at SoundWordsCentral.com, so it would be near-impossible to find a storyline more in sync with my interests that Adam Wainwright releasing his debut country music album Hey Y’all. And despite my relative lack of interest in country music (it’s not zero interest; it just isn’t a genre that often has me going out of my way to listen to it), I firmly believed that the best way that I could respect Wainwright, one of the most broadly likable St. Louis Cardinals of all-time, was to take his music as seriously as he is. This isn’t a novelty record; this is a record with professional production made by a singer-songwriter who has already performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. I didn’t want to enter this album intent on giving it a rave review because I hold such treasured memories of Wainwright freezing Carlos Beltrán and making Donald Trump sad, but I also didn’t want to come at it from a position of guns-ablaze snark. Yes, I listened because it was a baseball player who made it, but this is still the most excited I’ve been for a first foray into country music by a person born in late summer 1981 who is already more famous for something else since, well, last week.

The album opens with its title track. It is quite a bit more upbeat than Wainwright’s first single, and while the song is mired in country lyrical clichés, celebrating good manners and accents. And while this may be faint praise for those who dislike country music radio, it is a song that, for better or worse, does sound like it would fit. It has competent, clean vocals, solid production, and even a fun little mini-guitar solo. It’s the kind of song that I would hate to hear thirteen consecutive of, but I didn’t immediately check out.

“A Song Will Bring You Back” comes next and it takes a different country trope route, name-checking a variety of 80s and 90s country songs that even casual listeners will instantly recognize. On this track, I am delighted to report that Adam Wainwright’s relatively conservative vocal delivery does it favors–sometimes, modern country artists will start referencing George Strait or somebody with the same passion with which Aretha Franklin asks for a little respect, and it’s incredibly corny. In this case, it’s a moderately corny song, but it’s not exasperating.

Third comes “Hero in Your Eyes”, and the album continues to produce radio-friendly pop-country. Lyrically, I find this song to be an improvement because while the lyrics aren’t exactly poetry, they feel sincere–the previous track sounds like a vague Florida Georgia Line impression, but this feels like Adam Wainwright with a sincere meditation on being a father. That said, the lyrical improvement does make Wainwright’s limited vocal range a bit more apparent. He could take vocal chances here and he doesn’t; whether that’s because he lacks the range or because he chooses to play it safe is hard to say, though I lean towards the former.

“One Day They Won’t” is a bit of a sequel song to “Hero in Your Eyes”, an ode to parenthood (which, even though bro-country has largely subsided, is still kind of refreshing because a million songs about blue jeans still haunt me). I like whoever it is that does backing vocals on the song–unfortunately, the album’s relative lack of publicity makes finding who it is difficult. It’s a lot easier when I’m reviewing a Taylor Swift album or something.

Fifth is something closer to southern rock, which is a nice change of pace, “A Good Story”. It also fits Wainwright’s vocals a lot better because if you’re going for soft-edge Lynyrd Skynyrd rather than fully venturing into ballads, you just need charisma rather than a particularly strong voice. Wainwright’s voice is…fine, but anyone familiar with his pre-music work should know that charisma was always going to be his strength. This is my personal favorite of the album’s first five songs, but that’s probably just my preference for southern rock over straight-ahead country coming out.

“If You Would’ve Stayed” starts off slow but it quickly becomes by far the most interesting lyrics of the first half-dozen tracks. Anyone familiar with Wainwright’s biography should be able to pick up on this–it’s about his largely absent father, with nods of recognition to his mother and his older brother for filing the holes that he left. The production is fairly late-nineties (neither compliment nor criticism) and as a whole it reminds me of the early Brad Paisley song “He Didn’t Have To Be”, both in terms of lyrics and general tone (mostly a compliment–I’m going to guess Adam Wainwright would be quite thrilled to have the musical success that Paisley had).

After the sixth song, I became worried that I was starting to derive extratextual meaning to songs. That I found “If You Knew Georgia” to be boring and cliché is oddly comforting. Okay, this isn’t going to be a no-skips kind of album. I hope I am not upsetting anybody who thought Adam Wainwright was shooting for Album of the Year at next year’s Grammys.

Onto #8 and “I Like Coming Back”, which is perfectly pleasant. He makes (unless I missed something) his first lyrical reference to pitching (he referenced hitting a home run in “If You Would’ve Stayed”). It’s a simple enough premise–no matter what he does, he likes going home. That’s the thing he really wants. And since I don’t want to keep comparing Wainwright to the seven super-famous country artists I feel comfortable referencing, I will note that this is basically the same premise as “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones.

“American Hearts” is the obligatory patriotic song on the album. Given my general worldviews, I’m supposed to hate this, but honestly, as long as the singer sticks to referencing bits of Americana that they enjoy and not, like, outright jingoism, I don’t mind it even if it’s never a thing that particularly excites me. Look, there are good things about America. We invented gooey butter cake! Anyway, I like this song marginally more than “If You Knew Georgia” but I am sure I will never listen to it voluntarily again.

Next up is “El Camino”, and while I will give points for writing a song about driving on backroads that isn’t about driving the biggest, dumbest pickup truck in the world, this is album filler. That said, an inherently silly song suits Adam Wainwright’s voice well–the clean directness is about all you could reasonably want.

The eleventh track is “I’m Just Reminding Me” and I am starting to worry that this album is losing steam. I have absolutely nothing to say about this.

“Hit the Ground Running” picks up the energy a bit. Musically, this is among the album’s more interesting moments–it is guitar-driven in a way that, if rock music still existed, it might be categorized as such. Lyrically, it’s a fairly simple love song, but because of the speed of his delivery and because of the guitar-forwardness, it doesn’t become an eye-roller. Okay, I know this album is almost over, but I think I’m back.

“Show’ Em All” (sic) is a collection of sports references and truisms. It’s one of the few moments on the album where it is impossible to shake the memory that this is Adam Wainwright singing. But, hey, it’s the first album for a guy who is only getting reviewed on this site because he was a professional baseball player. I don’t begrudge it as long as Wainwright doesn’t have any illusions that this is a hit.

The best way for me to evaluate this album, as somebody who isn’t a frequent listener to this style of music, is probably to ask myself how I would feel if I didn’t have a fan relationship to the person who made it. And the answer is pretty simple: I probably wouldn’t think much of it at all. The album didn’t make me angry, but I also can’t pretend, aside from a couple songs that I found moderately interesting more than I found them to be anything exceptional, it provokes too much in the way of genuine excitement.

This album isn’t a morbid curiosity, like Tim McCarver’s album of big band standards or, to reference the weirdest album you may not be aware exists, Guy LaFleur’s disco album where he recites hockey rules. It is, for better or worse, conventional. Having a middling summation feels appropriate–Adam Wainwright isn’t exactly taking a lot of chances, but perhaps he needs to get his toes wet before he truly jumps into country artistry. Or perhaps this was just a bucket list item that he crossed off. It’s an album worth listening to once if you’re curious how good or bad it is, even if it never delivers a definitive answer, though if you are checking in to see if Adam Wainwright is the 21st century Charley Pride, that seems a bit far-fetched.