but there is a guy named barryforever that can’t talk enough shit about how Matt Cain is not a winner. I believe he calls him Matt “Tomko” Cain. Not sure what my point is, but that dude is a ridiculous douche! Feel free to share your barryforever anecdotes.

I still believe that Matt Cain is going to be a hall of famer. Games like this, where Matt clearly doesn’t have his best stuff, and has to keep his cool (which he does better than any pitcher on the staff) yet still manages to go 7 strong just validate the point. I still think in the long hall, when all is said and done, he will be better than even the great Tim Lincecum. I know I’m in the extreme minority on that one, but only the future will tell. Cain should be 3-0, and his career wins should be much higher than they already are. But, he’s still very young, and does not get rattled when the breaks go against him. His composure on the mound is second to none, and should never be overlooked. He won another in my book today.

Great freakin’ post Sharksrog. But, I would argue that Lincecum has had far less time to have the league adjust to him; don’t forget that Cainer’s been at it for awhile now. In my opinion this makes him look even better. And he’s younger than Tim. And, although Tim can show more confidence than anyone when he’s on, he also shows signs of frustration that Matt does not when things go against him. These non-stat tangibles are what I am basing my opinions on.

And thank god we’re having this discussion with both Matt and Tim as Giants. It’s really a win-win situaish.

Today’s game seemed like the kind of loss that, simply, occassionally happens to pitchers. The team scored some runs. The other team scored some runs. One manager double switched and defensive substituted all over your face (at least, that’s what it looked like based on following the box score on my phone), making sure that you have the weakest possible lineup available for extra innings, and the other manager doesn’t. It’s kind of unfortunate that we’ve been conditioned to take a game like this and add it to the Cain pilings, when I’d say this (admittedly young) season has actually been a great example of things finally returning to the mean for him.

I realize that this was hardly the point of your post, and I’m absolutely in agreement with you about how good Cain has been, but since the mere idea of “oh god not AGAIN!” came up from a perfectly normal game like this, I just wanted to throw that out there.

Matt Cain and RxMeister: Coming to NBC this Summer!

I like Matt Cain, he is a good pitcher. They showed a stat during the game with his record in games where the Giants scored 2 runs and 3 runs, and both were great win percentages. I knew that the Giants didn’t score runs for Cain, but this really drove it home since there had to be an absurd number of games where the Giants only scored 0 or 1 run in his starts.

Right on Lars! Wish I could take credit for that one, I really dislike no.38 and Zito, as humans, and it hurts me that they have to wear the orange & black.

Is really only been down 1 mph or a fraction of an mph, and I think I remember reading somewhere that Rags had wanted him to learn to cruise along at a lower rate (maybe for better control or for setting up other pitches?).
At any rate, I wouldn’t worry about Cain being over-used or his velocity. Two starts ago he was hitting 94-95 no worries. And his offspeed stuff is definitely improving. If he can lower his BB’s it’ll be on.

that it’s 2009, and people – even smart, cool, nerdy people who frequent this board – pay one iota of notice to a pitchers w/l record. Really, I have not acknowledged that a pitcher “deserves” a win or a loss for about 20 years now – even since I discovered USENET. It’s just totally irrelvent to anything a pitcher has to offer a baseball team.

So, the sooner we start just flat out ignoring the W/L stat for pitchers, the sooner everyone will just forget about it and it will got the way of the GWRBI.

Cain gets stronger. This may be the single most overlooked aspect of this post. Cain is truly a throwback and if he were born 40 years earlier he’d be one of the guys throwing 300+ innings a year.

I thought all of this had been covered during the last two seasons? I definitely don’t disagree with it, but I thought it was conventional wisdom.

I am not wholly convinced that there is not something about Matt Cain that leads to a lack of run support. It is a truism that correlation does not equal causality, but that skirts past the fact that Cain pitching appears to associate with fewer runs scored. The issue is that there is no theory that fits with the way baseball is perceived today, i.e.—only believing what can be measured.

“Not a born winner” is perhaps not the most elegant theory, but maybe its getting at something. It is tempting to insist that a pitcher operates in some sort of vacuum, at a complete remove from the offensive side of the game, but that’s just not really true. For all of its compartmentalization, this is a team sport. Those hitters play on the same field as the pitcher and it’s not crazy to think that the guy up there on the mound affects their mindset.

For all his equivocation, A-Rod made a salient point at his preseason apologia: baseball is a mental game. Simply thinking that the stuff he was injecting made him better probably went a long way toward actually making him better. Researchers and the like find the placebo effect irksome precisely because it is real and quantifiable and they can’t explain why.

Just because we can’t put our fingers on a tangible mechanism for this phenomenon does not necessarily mean it does not exist. To paraphrase someone or other, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your sabermetrics.”

Not really close. Here is what I wrote about the Giants rotation quality of pitching using the Baseball Forecaster’s PQS (Pure Quality Start; assigns QS by sabermetric principles):

When you have a whole staff of pitchers capable of dealing a DOM (PQS of 4 or 5) start a larger percentage of the time, the other team will struggle to consistently beat you, as each game will be close and tough. As I’ve noted in my PQS reporting, a pitcher with DOM% of 40-49% is a good pitcher (means 40-49% of his starts are DOM starts), above 50% is great, above 70% is elite. Here is our pitchers’ PQS, either seasonally or indication of potential:

Lincecum: 67% in 2007, 79% in 2008; he has been 74%+ since second half of 2007

Johnson: 58% in 2006, 60% in 2007, 53% in 2008; been 57%+ in 4 of 5 half seasons, last three seasons (injured second half of 2007)

Cain: 52% in 2006, 56% in 2007 and 2008; been 50%+ since second half of 2006, reaching 60%+ in 3 of those 5 half-seasons

Zito: he has been under 40% for the most part since second half of 2006, except for 60% for us second half 2007. But he had 40% in 2003, 47% in 2004, 66% in 2005, and 41% in 2006, showing that when he is effective and on his game, he can be a very good pitcher for us, which would be particularly deadly for us in the back of the rotation

Sanchez: 45% overall in 2008, but 53% in first half of 2008

As anyone can see, whereas most teams have maybe 1-2 great starters on their rotation, we have 3 great starters with Lincecum, Johnson, and Cain, with Lincecum and Johnson being particularly dominating a large percentage of the time. Zito, when he is on, could be a team’s #2 starter with his low 4’s, high 3’s ERA when he is going good. That is great when he’s your #4 or #5 starter.

To top it off, Sanchez has shown that he’s capable of being a great starter, based on his first half of 2008, and it appears that only stamina is holding him back from joining Lincecum and Cain as a great starter, and he’s our #5 starter. How good is that when our #5 starter is capable of, for extended stretches, pitching as well as any other team’s #1 and #2 starters?

For our purposes here, as can be seen by the difference in PQS starts, Cain, while very good, is nothing like Lincecum, who has been elite. Cain suffers in comparison with Lincecum, but when compared with the league, he’s a very good, consistently good, starting pitcher. Like with many young starters, his control is not under control, but he’s been able to keep it under enough control so that his K/BB ratio is above the 2.0 that you want to see in your starting pitchers ( I think he’s be around 2.1 for his career).

That is why I’ve been saying that it is crazy talk about trading either Cain or Lincecum for a bat. We have something very unique among the league with the two of them. Breaking them up would just mean we are like any other team with one good starter and one good hitter. Now with Sanchez perhaps ready to join them atop our rotation, we could have a rotation that rivals the Orioles dominant rotations of the late 60’s, early 70’s.

Teams with a rotation capable of dominating from top to bottom, and who are consistently dominating (as expressed by their high percentage of DOM starts), will be extremely hard to beat in a short series, particularly since our top pitcher, Lincecum, should be better than another other team’s top pitcher, since our pitchers after him should be better than the other team’s later pitchers. That is, once our offense is strong enough to do that.