When I saw this fanpost I was going to do the same thing. Well done.

I think I love you.

So what am I so afraid of?

Thank you. This is the best summation of the situation as I have read.

Stunk? Seriously?! Matt Cain has been a slightly above average pitcher this year. He’s got a K/BB of 2.20, FIP of 3.93, WHIP of 1.34, DERA of 4.45 (4.5 = league average) and ERA+ of 96. Not great, but slightly above average, and definitely not bad.

He’s become so “very hittable” that he’s striking out 8.29 batters per 9 innings (it was 7.34 last year) and is still giving up less hits per inning than your average pitcher.

The fact that Lincecum and Sanchez are “maturing” is irrelevant. The fact that half the staff throws harder than him is both irrelevant and wrong, since only Lincecum throws harder.

Cain is having a disappointing season so far, but it hasn’t been that bad, and it’s not even the All-Star break. In 2006 Cain’s ERA was over 5 at the break, and everyone was really worried, but he turned out fine. I agree that there’s some reasons to be worried, but people are really exaggerating.

Tell me how polished and mature you were at 23. And I don’t know how old you are, but are you telling me that you are perfect now and don’t repeat any mistakes? If not, then cut Cain a break.

Tell me of any pitcher in the history of baseball who didn’t have their version of the fricking Jamie Carrolls of the world.

It’s one game, one night, pitchers have also been known to have a bad game, nobody is perfect in baseball. Take a breath. Chill.

Not that he’s as good, but Koufax struggled to figure things out for 4 full seasons of starting, 6 seasons as a major leaguer (bonus babies had to be MLB rostered in those days), he was 25 when he finally figured things out, 26 when he started crushing the competition. If you were a fan of his back then, you would have been complaining for a full two seasons before he figured it out if you started when Koufax was 23. And he wasn’t even that good a pitcher to start out, Cain has Koufax outpitched on an age comparison in a higher scoring environment today versus the early 60’s.

That said, there is no guarantee that he will ever be “fine”. But he, over the past two seasons, have been one of the best pitchers in the league, period, no age consideration, no pass for age. Period. So have a little faith that the Cain of the past two years will show up. For whatever reason, he has been a slot starter each season. When he finally puts it all together, he will be as good early in the season as he is at the back end.

For now, enjoy his good games and consider it all part of the learning curve when he screws up. Most people his age are still struggling in A-ball trying to figure things out. Cain is in the big show and better than most.

For example, not to pick on him, but Jesse English signed the same time as Cain and had a better first pro season. He’s still in San Jose trying to put it all together. This year looks promising, but he still has not gone through the gaunlet of AA and AAA. Same age. Nothing to be ashamed of, most prospects never ever get a cup of coffee in the majors, let alone star in it like Cain has for the last two years.

So Cain is fine. If his ERA were like Zito’s right now (not to pick on Barry), then I could understand some worry over things, but Cain is right around where I would like him to be, which is at least a #2 starter overall. Among starters who have started most of the season, he has the 62nd best ERA. With 30 teams, that would make him 2nd among #3 hitters (for simplicity, I like to call #1’s the top 30 ERA, #2’s the second 30 ERA, etc.). That is close enough for me.

Plus, it’s a building year anyway, we are not really meant to compete for the division title. If not for the collapse of all the other teams in this division, we wouldn’t be so close right now. So don’t worry about Cain unless he’s getting battered around every start by the Jamie Carrolls of the world. Every game is different, there’s sometimes somebody who has your number that game. It happens.

So lay off Cain, he’s fine. Worry about Correia, maybe, he hasn’t done much, but as the #5 he isn’t expected to do a lot. But after his end of season run last season, I was hoping for more from him. I am hoping it was just the injury waiting to happen that slowed his start, and that it is rust that is keeping him back now. But he needs to put in a good showing the rest of this season if he wants to stay a starter like he hopes to do.

I haven’t seen people making excuses, though. I’ve seen people giving reasons.

There are very good reasons to expect that Cain is going to struggle this year and probably next year as well. There are very good reasons to expect that he won’t put it together until the second half of his twenties.

We’re not dismissing the fact that Cain is struggling. He’s obviously and visibly struggling. We’re just not making a big shit over three wonderfully sample sized months of fairly effective inconsistency in a guy’s early career.

NAH.

I dunno. Cleveland has dropped from in the top 5 in payroll to the bottom ten over this run. Seems like even with missteps like the Hafner extension, they can afford to throw some money at the problems in the offseason.

One area where Shapiro definetly gets a “D” is bullpen construction. I’ve always wondered why cleveland can’t have good bullpens two years in a row, when the Twins and Padres always seem to have half a dozen quality arms in the pen.

I’ve never liked the strategy of tearing a team down before it really falls apart, because you never know what’s going to happen. If they had kept it together another year or two they might have had some kind of St. Louis Cardinals type year and won themselves a world series. Unless you’re going to have a Yankees or Red Sox type payroll, it’s almost impossible to be in the mix every year, so you might as well fully enjoy it while it lasts. Now, as you’ve said, it’s about time for them to tear it down again, and they have no titles to show for it. By the way, the Indian announcers said last night that they’re going to take one last run at signing Sabathia before they trade him at the deadline, so maybe they’re not ready to fully rebuild just yet.