Cardinals, Carpenter are cautiously optimistic

JUPITER, Fla. -- By now, the St. Louis Cardinals have learned not to get overly excited about Chris Carpenter.

The Cardinals are an impressive 69-27 the last five seasons with their staff ace pitching. The 2005 NL Cy Young winner is 51-20 with a 3.11 ERA, his .718 winning percentage the best in baseball during that time. The challenge has been getting him on the mound with the last two seasons bringing only heartache, or more specifically, elbow ache.

The Cardinals and Carpenter are settling for cautiously optimistic about his spotless spring training start -- eight scoreless innings over three appearances. Just in case, they're conditioning Kyle McClellan as a potential replacement starter.

"I'm not going to get carried away with it," pitching coach Dave Duncan said after Carpenter threw four shutout innings against the Boston Red Sox with an economical 48 pitch count on Thursday. "Each time he does something that you consider a step forward and he does it successfully it's a plus. So far, it's encouraging."

Carpenter is pleased with how he has been progressing, too.

"Results-wise, it's obviously been pretty good," he said. "I feel like each time out there I'm getting back to game situations and trying to execute pitches.

"It's gone the way I'd hoped. So far."

Positive signs in two of his first three outings is the immediate adversity he has flicked aside. The Mets wasted a leadoff double in the first inning of Carpenter's spring debut and the Red Sox wasted Josh Reddick's triple on Carpenter's second pitch of the game on Thursday.

Carpenter said he wasn't worried about the run, just executing.

"No matter if it's here or the regular season you can't try to do anything more than make pitches when you get in situations like that, and that's what I did," he said. "If I start to concern myself with him, I stop concerning myself with making pitches, and then you get into big trouble."

Still, evidence three weeks away from the regular season that the right-hander is not yet out of the woods is the decision to give Carpenter his first regular-season start not in the opener but in Game 4, lest a crimp in the schedule create upheaval in the rotation. A conservative startup has put him a step behind the rest of the starting five, allowing for a more gradual pitch-count buildup.

Duncan said Carpenter's mechanics are coming along, noting he made the adjustments whenever necessary.

"After being out of competition as long as he's been, you want to let him ease back in," Duncan said. "He'll still have plenty of time to get his pitch count where we would like to have it at the start of the season, if he continues on like he has."

Once again, that uncertainty. Also the reason Adam Wainwright gets the ball on opening day.

It's understandable that the Cardinals are skittish about counting on Carpenter, who started on opening day 2007 and not again before undergoing reconstructive elbow surgery that July. He returned last July intent on bolstering the rotation but ended up throwing only 15 1-3 innings before getting shut down again, undergoing arthroscopic shoulder surgery in September and then having an elbow nerve transposed to relieve irritation in November.

Duncan said the Cardinals began training camp with no expectations.

"Now, if you ask me what I was hoping would happen, so far this is it," Duncan said. "But you don't know what's going to happen."