Cardinals' Adam Wainwright: Three scoreless frames Tuesday

Wainwright (1-0) fired three scoreless innings in Tuesday's 9-2 Grapefruit League win over the Marlins, surrendering three hits and striking out two.

After giving up a pair of solo home runs in his last trip to the mound against the Braves last Thursday, Derek Dietrich's double served as the longest hit against the former 20-game winner Tuesday. He scattered two other singles and fired 44 pitches overall, with a heavy emphasis on his changeup. Although he's focused on showcasing the pitch in past springs, Wainwright appears intent on utilizing it with regularity in the coming season despite only throwing it 2.3 percent of the time in 2016. That notion was only reinforced by the effectiveness with which Wainwright deployed it Tuesday, something that didn't escape his boss's attention. "Whenever you're seeing the hitters up there taking the swings that they're taking, it's just a great sign," manager Mike Matheny said. "A lot of the times it's hard to even tell from the side because it has a lot of characteristics as far as depth and speed as his cutter when he throws it in the mid-80s. But definitely some great results against those left-handed hitters. That cutter will speed them up and the changeup, obviously, will slow him down."