That was the 185th start of Matt Cain’s career. It was the 16th time that he’s pitched seven innings or more, allowing one run or fewer, without getting a win.
Jack Morris had 527 starts in his career. There were 14 times that he pitched seven innings or more, allowing one run or fewer, without getting a win.
So if during his next 342 starts, Cain can get -2 no-decisions or losses whenever he throws 7+ IP/1 ER, he’ll catch up to Morris, and we can all stop complaining about how unlucky Cain has been.
This might be the most frustrating team I’ve ever watched. There have been low-scoring teams for the past few seasons, of course, but with most of those teams, you could feel better by blaming the general manager. Brian Sabean was a fine scapegoat. Then he cobbled together a league-average offense last summer, did well enough in the offseason (Tejada being the only obvious clunker), and fielded a similar offense this year. Injuries ruined everything. It’s fun to blame Bochy for starting Rowand -- and, really, it’s totally ridiculous that he is the DH for a team above AA -- but that’s not why the offense is so bad.
The offense is so bad because it’s a team that starts Manny Burriss and Brandon Crawford up the middle ... and that’s something close to the best permutation they could put out there. The shoulda-started-him guy that is supposed to help the offense is a .330 OBP, high-strikeout, defensive liability. The best hitter in the lineup is either a guy who was benched last October for not hitting, or a guy with a career .325 on-base percentage. Not sure which is which yet.
No, the offense is this bad is because the lineup doesn’t have good hitters. Please cite this statistical study if you plan to reference it. It’s only fair. This team has been brutalized by injuries, by the loss of someone who hit like Juan Uribe (admittedly, keeping Uribe wouldn’t have helped, either), by the complete disintegration of Aubrey Huff, and by injuries. Also, injuries. That’s not fun, and you can’t even blame Sabean like you used to.
Well, he did sign Rowand to that contract. But Rowand was the entire offense today! Without Sabean’s guiding hand, the team would have scored zero runs today!
At least the stupid White Sox did something right. It’s games like this that make me pretend that the Giants were 8.5 games out two weeks ago, but a furious winning streak took them all the way to first place! Here we are, a first-place team! Can you believe how awesome those last two weeks are? And here we are: first place!
Blecch.