Wainwright has had the right stuff against Rockies (May 27, 2017)

DENVER -- Adam Wainwright will try to continue his domination over the Colorado Rockies and his success at Coors Field when the St. Louis Cardinals try to even their series on Saturday.

The Rockies walloped the Cardinals 10-0 in the series opener on Friday night. It was Colorado's most lopsided win and St. Louis' most lopsided loss of the season.

Wainwright (4-3, 4.81 ERA) will be opposed by rookie left-hander Kyle Freeland (5-2, 3.31), who will face the Cardinals for the first time.

Wainwright is 9-1 with a 1.70 ERA in 14 games (10 starts) against the Rockies. That is the lowest all-time ERA against the Rockies among opposing pitchers. He has beaten them more times than any other team outside the National League Central.

At Coors Field, Wainwright is 3-0 with a 2.73 ERA in five games (four starts).

While winning his past two starts, Wainwright has allowed one run and nine hits in 13 1/3 innings for a 0.68 ERA. In his first seven starts of the season, Wainwright was 2-3 with a 6.37 ERA.

"The last couple starts I think was a culmination of getting some of the timing in my delivery back in a better place," Wainwright said.

He said he "was leaning out with my leg" while trying to get it farther down the mound, which caused his arm to drag and his pitches to rise.

"But more than anything," Wainwright said, "is finding the correct intensity to go with every pitch. I had gotten to a point where I sort of sacrificed stuff for trying to be more fine on the corners. I went at a higher intensity level before.

"What I've learned in this game is you've got to be a good self-evaluator or not be a very good player. Those first few starts, I had decent stuff, which wasn't translating. I'm thinking, 'All right, why is it that when I get runners on, I've been throwing 93-94 (mph), but nobody's on, I've been throwing 87, 88, 89?'

"There needed to be more of a middle ground, almost towards that top end kind of intensity level all the time."

Wainwright said he also dropped the speed of his signature curveball "pretty dramatically" a couple starts ago.

"So what that allowed me to do," Wainwright said, "is get hitters out of that in-between spot where they could sit in the middle and just react one way or the other because the cutter was two miles off the fastball and the breaking ball was close enough to the cutter that they could kind of sit there."

Freeland ranks second in the majors and first in the National League with a 63.5 ground ball percentage. In his last start Sunday at Cincinnati, Freeland gave up four runs (three earned) in 5 2/3 innings with five hits and posted his second consecutive win in Colorado's 6-4 victory. The Rockies are 7-2 in Freeland's nine starts.

Colorado right fielder Carlos Gonzalez went 0-for-4 in Friday night's romp over the Cardinals, but Gonzalez has come out of his early-season slump that saw his average dwindle to .188 on May 10 with two homers and seven RBIs in 30 games.

Gonzalez, who has raised his average to .250, has at least one hit in 13 of his past 15 games. He went 15-for-33 (.455) in the eight-game hitting streak that ended Friday and included three doubles, two homers, five RBIs and seven runs.

"It's nice to see my bat get going to help the club," he said. "It's all about timing. I can go into batting practice and hit bomb after bomb everywhere, but I'm trying to put that swing into a game. You want to get that (front) foot down and let your hands go to work and be on time. When I'm able to do that, good things happen.

"I'm more ready to hit. I got back to being aggressive. They were throwing me a lot of balls, so when they throw you a lot of balls, you start to take more. You start to walk more, also you start to take a lot of good pitches."