Matt Cain Pitch Value

Just for the record, Matt Cain doesn’t give up too many HR’s. He gives up “too few” which is why people are always waiting for his HR rate to regress and turn him into a mediocre pitcher. He’s also had an above average strikeout rate for most of his career.

Isn’t the whole formula behind pitch values a little too isolated for each situation? From what I understand of it from reading fangraphs, when a team starts out with no runners on base, they score an average of 0.55 runs with no outs, no runners on. If a pitcher gives up a hit, then with one runner on and no outs, the team scores an average of 0.95 runs. But let’s say Cain throws a couple sliders for balls to get behind in the count 2-0, and he has to offer up a fastball down the middle that the batter hits, then his fastball loses a lot of value, with the two sliders not losing anything, even though they were the reason he had to throw a fastball in that count, which is what the hitter was looking for. Not really fair to isolate the fastball there when it was partly because of previously bad pitches that he had to go to it, it seems to me. But I may just be simplifying it too much, and there might be more behind it I guess, I was just wondering if anything else went into pitch values

Besides the command issues, I have always felt Cain’s greatest weakness was the lack of a quality plus offspeed pitch that he can throw consistently. He has games where his offspeed pitches look good, and then others where he can’t command them, or seems to barely throw any. Cain often seems unable to put a hitter away with a two strike count, which could be related to inconsistent offspeed stuff.

Unfortunately, I really don’t have a whole lot of stats to back this up, so, at this point, they are just observations of mine.

that plus curveball that he had his first two years in the bigs. he’s throwing it less and I’d probably assume less often for strikes. That slider he developed to compensate really only ever worked on righties anyways.

Kenshin, how should we interpret your first table above? Is a higher number better, or a lower number?

When you say “doesn’t strike hitters out”, you mean “strikes out more than the average starting pitcher, but less than Pedro Martinez in his prime”, right? Because Cain’s struck out almost 20% of the hitters he’s faced in his career, which is pretty good for a starter.

If you’re talking about the 50 innings he’s pitched this year, let me roll up the small sample size newspaper and hit you on the nose…