It’s official, Adam Wainwright will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the entire 2011 season.

The silver lining for the Cardinals is that they should trot out a pretty good offensive team for 2011. The Lineup Analysis Tool, using Marcel projections, rates this projected lineup at 4.8 runs per game. Since Wainwright allowed about 2.8 runs per nine innings over the last two years, we’d expect the Cardinals to win 25 of his 34 starts in 2011, a .746 winnings percentage. If they replace him with pitchers who average four runs per game, they should produce a .590 winning percentage, or about 20 wins.

So can the Cardinals offense squeeze out 50 more runs to make up for Wainwright’s loss. Albert Pujols will be motivated to have a career year with his contract up. David Freese and Colby Rasmus are at ages where we could see improvements. So there is upside potential in the lineup.

All is not lost for the Cardinals. As Rob Neyer pointed out, the Cardinals played like a 90 win team last year, so the loss of Wainwright puts them even at 85 wins. An 85 win team, with a little luck, can win 90 games and make the playoffs. A little more offense, and Dave Duncan working miracles with the pitching staff might just do the trick.