Is this the year of the Cain (Not to be confused with the year of the Crane)

Unless you’ve been living somewhere in the South Pacific for the last several years, you’ve undoubtedly heard of San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain. Cain was drafted at the age of 17 by the Giants, and made his major league debut at 20. Despite a repertoire that includes a beastly fastball and devastating slider, Cain’s record the last several years has been absolutely atrocious. While a large percentage of this can be attributed to terrible run support (his ERA for the past 2 seasons is 3.70, his record is 15-30), his major problem has been too many walks. Last season he had 91 walks to only 186 strikeouts, a pretty miserable ratio, and the season before he had 79 walks to 163 K’s. The question then, is whether he will be able to overcome these control issues, as well as just overall bad luck, and have the breakout season that he has been capable of for several years now. I believe that he will have a breakout season this year for several reasons. The addition of Randy Johnson to the Giants rotation was not only a brilliant move in the short term, giving them a dominant lefty to counter Lincecum, but as well as the long term, giving them an old, grizzled, extraordinarily tall veteran to help nurture their young, extremely talented pitching staff. The closest thing they’d had to that prior to this season was Steve “Disgrace to Humanity” Kline. One interesting thing to look at in Randy Johnson’s stats is the enormous dropoff in BB/9 between 1992 and 1993. It appears that at that point, he figured something out that allowed him to correct his control problems, as he has kept his BB total reasonably low since then. Matt Cain may very well experience a similar epiphany with Randy Johnson giving him pointers, and if he is able to get his BB numbers down, he will be a truly formidable starting pitcher. Cain may also experience a slight jump in K’s should he be getting tips from the master of the strikeout himself. Another, rather small thing to consider with Cain’s rise as a young pitcher is his ability to hit a baseball. In 2007, Cain batted an abysmal, devastating, horrendous .070. Last season, he improved significantly, to a still horrible .113. While with any other starter that would be a minute, insignificant number, with Cain’s run support, it does matter in some way. A third, and more intangible reason that Cain should, in theory, have his breakout season this year is this- it’s just impossible to imagine a pitcher having such piss-poor run support 3 seasons in a row. To give you some idea, there was a point in 2007, excluding a 16 run whomping of Colorado, that Cain was getting less than 2 runs per game of run support. In 2007, Cain finished with the 10th lowest NL ERA, but had less wins than Byung-Hyun Kim and Jorge Sosa. Not only do you have to really feel for the kid, but you also have to say, from a statistical standpoint, that it’s simply not probable to have him get the same devastating run support this year that he’s been getting for the past 2 seasons. And if he does, odds are he’ll still have an outstanding ERA and a pretty crushed psyche to go with it.