Archive for the 'Matt Cain' Category
Kickham notwithstanding, but what the hell has happened to our starting pitchers?
Lincecum has allowed an awful 34 runs in 60 innings.
Cain has allowed a staggering 39 runs in 64 innings.
Zito has allowed a Zito-esque 34 runs in 56 innings.
Bumgarner has allowed a pretty decent 27 runs in 72 innings
Vogelsong has allowed an astounding 44 runs in 46 innings.
For comparison:
Kershaw has allowed 18 runs in 80 innings.
Zimmerman has allowed 15 runs in 73 innings
Corbin has allowed 14 in 68 innings
Harvey has allowed 16 in 78 innings.
Our starters have the fourth worst record and ERA in the league. This is supposed to be the strength of the team. What the hell is going on? Anyone?
Every time I turn the game on, it’s already 4-1. If it wasn’t for our league best offense, we’d be in last place by a mile.
Don’t expect any significant changes. These guys have to figure out what the league has figured out about them. They’d better get it done soon. The Giants are about to be on the road for most of the next month, and starting every game down 4 runs is a recipe for last place.
UPDATE: Not that it pertains to this post, but the Giants are down 5-2 in the 7th inning, and the three batters that just came to the plate (Belt, Torres and Crawford), and all three of them swung at the first pitch and flied out. Unbelievable.
UPDATE, PART II: Well, Lincecum looks completely lost. The only question is how much longer can the Giants keep running him out there. I can understand Bochy letting him hit with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fourth, with the team about to be away for most of the next month, but Holy Christ, he walked out for the top of the fifth and just shit the bed completely. What the hell?
Sandoval isn’t helping. 2 for his last 25. Swinging at every pitch. Jeez.
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Posted in Barry Zito, Bullpen, Cy Young, Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, NL West, Ryan Vogelsong, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum |
8 Backtalkers »Dan Lependorf, over the Hardball Times, puts together a graph detailing how impressive Matt Cain’s Perfecto really was:
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blockquote>…. If a pitcher strikes out 14 batters in a single game, it’ll be the lead story on every sports news program of the night. After all, it’s only happened a few hundred times in baseball history. If a pitcher throws a perfect game, it’s one of those landmark events that’ll be sold on DVD in the MLB.com store. And people will buy it, because hey, it’s a perfect game. Only 22 of those.
But both of them at the same time? Congratulations, Matt Cain. You just had one of the best nights from any pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball.
But then Bill James –who Lependorf cites in his article– writes (subscription required) that Cain’s game, while very impressive, isn’t even close to being the best pitched game of all-time:
…. The Game Score for Joe Oeschger, when he pitched 26 innings one afternoon, was 153, a feat beyond the understanding of modern fans. But in the last 60 years, Dean Chance against the Yankees on June 6, 1964, had the highest Game Score on record—116. 14 innings, 3 hits, 12 strikeouts, no runs.
James then goes on to chart the best games, seasons and careers using his Game Score method. It’s a great read, and well worth the $3 bucks a month you have to pay for access to Bill James Online.
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Posted in Baseball Books, Bill James, Cy Young, Hall of Fame, Matt Cain, NL West, San Francisco Giants |
11 Backtalkers »Tom Verducci chose the 2010 San Francisco Giants as his Sportsmen of the Year:
…. In three homes over 52 seasons did San Francisco follow this serial in wait for a championship. The Giants lacked the historical and literary embellishments of Brooklyn, Boston and Chicago, and so their suffering went underplayed, though much suffering did they know. Five times in those years they played a Game 6 or Game 7 with a chance to win the series, and lost every one of those games, getting shut out in three of those five potential clinchers.
The agony began with a 1-0 loss to the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series, which ended when Willie McCovey lined out to second base with the tying and winning runs in scoring position. In the 1987 NLCS, up three games to two, they were shut out in back-to-back losses to St. Louis. And in the 2002 World Series, up 5-0 on the Angels with one out and nobody on in the seventh, they managed the biggest collapse in a potential clincher in series history, followed by a 4-1 whimper of an elimination in Game 7.
This is all you need to know about the cruelty of Giants culture: Charlie Brown is a Giants fan. Two months after McCovey’s lineout, Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, from Santa Rosa, drew a strip in which Charlie and Linus sit brooding silently for three panels, only to have Charlie wail in the fourth, “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?”
…. Not only did the Giants give their fans a winner, they also gave them an unforgettable one, one with a Playbill’s worth of characters who exuded joy and thankfulness about what was happening. They are now characters, and not unlike the misfits and urchins Dickens himself gave us, who are established eternally.
Wilson and that frightfully awful beard. Aubrey Huff and the red thong. Lincecum and the hair. Cody Ross, the greatest in-season claim in the history of waivers. The prenaturally cool Buster Posey. The unflappable Matt Cain. The very roundness of Pablo Sandoval and Juan Uribe. The redemption of prodigal Bay Area son Pat Burrell. Watching these Giants, you half expected Jean Valjean to pop up in the on-deck circle at any moment.
Well done, Tom.
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Posted in Brian Sabean, Brian Wilson, Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey, Cy Young, Matt Cain, Most Valuable Player, NL West, NLCS, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, World Series |
19 Backtalkers »Sorry it’s taken me so long to write. It’s a 10 hour round trip. driving, and I added shopping and a stay over, so….
That said, it was an awesome game to be at. Terrific comeback win against a guy who looked unbeatable with a two-run lead. Now the Giants have a 2-0 lead in the Serious, and head into Texas looking to put a hammer lock on the series.
The pitching, outside of a few struggles by Lincecum, has been nails. Cain is able. Freddie is ready. Uribe is a “whole lot of happy.” So am I.
As for my experience at PacBell….
The food is horrible. It’s embarrassing, really. In a city that prides itself on having some of the best restaurants in the world, the shit, the absolute SHIT that they sell should make them hide their faces in shame. Especially at those prices. $9 dollars for a Silver Bullet that is hardly even cool. The hot dogs, at Triple A Club Level, no less, were abysmal. The garlic fries were soggy, and warm. The sushi –in San Francisco, mind you– was inedible. Were I in charge, I’d fire every vendor in the place, save, Cha Cha’s. Somebody told me the brats were good. I didn get one, because not one of the vendors could handle the crowd. There were lines everywhere, for the entire game.
The Giants do so much so well, they handle the history of the team, the fly over was great, Tony Bennett, come on. Awesome.
They were understaffed everywhere, and, inconceivably, left money on the table by being so. It definitely took a little away from the experience. Just a little, but still. Warm beer?
Anyway, great guys in my section, 211, K, 5,6. Parker, I never got your email. Leave me a backtalk with it, and I’ll keep up with your travels in Texas. Fly safe.
To everyone else I partied with… If you leave a backtalk, tell me your seat so I can put a face with the name.
GO GIANTS!!!
UPDATE: Ummm….. Ian? A Silver Bullet is a Coors Light beer, not a slice of pizza. :-0
Other than that…. I am a food snob, sure. But the food I’ve had at PacBell has gotten worse. It’s been ten years since they opened. I was there the day they played the very first baseball game there. Preseason, 2000, against the Yankees. Posada hit it in the water, first home run at PacBell. The food that night was very good, not great, but very good. Wednesday night, the food was atrocious. So was the service.
OK, not what I was there for, fine.
San Francisco is one of the great food cities in the world. The standard is, and should be, higher.
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Posted in Bill Neukom, Matt Cain, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, World Series |
55 Backtalkers »For someone in the national media to say something stupid uninformed about the Giants:
…. If we look exclusively at the factors pitchers control most directly, which are strikeouts, walks and home runs, they look more like league-average innings eaters than shutdown stars.
…. the 2010 Giants are hardly a historically great run-prevention team. Their hitters will probably have to pick up some slack for them to win the World Series.
That someone happens to be Dan Rosenheck of the NY Times, who apparently was asleep every night of September while the Giants posted one of the great stretch runs of pitching in baseball history.
Over a span of 26 games, –during which they had to win every game– all the Giants pitching staff did was roll out a 1.78 ERA, throw 5 shutouts, allow 46 earned runs in 232 innings, pile up 234 strikeouts, allow just 58 walks, and hold the opposition to a Neifi Perez-like .181/.241/.283/ .524 OPS line, with just 15 home runs, and post a team-wide .90 WHIP, 4.02 K/BB and 9.06 K/9IP.
Just for the record, St Louis posted a 2.46 ERA in September of 2001, the only team in baseball over the last ten years to be within one run of matching what the Giants just did.
I was gonna do a side by side with Texas, but, really, there is no point. That is, in fact, an historically great run of pitching, and I challenge Dan Rosenheck (or anybody) to come up with a team that has had a run like that in the last twenty years.
By the by, during the postseason, the Giants numbers have regressed, just a bit.
So far, in 91 innings, the Giants have a 2.47 ERA, with 102 strikeouts, 28 walks, and 2 more shutouts. They’ve allowed 25 earned runs, and a .199/274/.297 .571 OPS line. They’re K/BB has dropped to 3.31, while their strikeouts per 9 has increased to 10.46. Their team-wide WHIP is 1.02.
But, this isn’t the same pitching staff that started the season, just as it isn’t the same offense.
UPDATE: The NY Times’ Dan Rosenheck took the time top reply to my rant. CVheck out the backtalk. Kudos to Dan for joining the fray here at OBM. I disagree with him, but his willingness to back and forth demonstrates his character and toughness.
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Posted in Brian Wilson, Cy Young, Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, NL West, San Francisco Giants, Talking Heads, Tim Lincecum, World Series |
17 Backtalkers »Freddie Sanchez and Andres Torres were a combined 5 for 42 coming into tonight. Add in their 1 for 6 tonight, and the top of the Giants lineup is an offense-killing 6 for 48 (.125 average), all singles. Is it time for a change at the top of the lineup?
UPDATE: You don’t cut that throw off!
UPDATE: Well, errors, allowing the pitcher to get a hit with two strikes, pitchers missing their spots by a foot, no one ion the lineup other than Cody Ross hitting at all…. All in all, the Giants got their split. It’s on Cain, now.
I might also mention that maybe Torres needs to switch to a lighter bat. Just maybe.
UPDATE: It’s gotten to the point that they should just stop using Romo…. Uribe is a black hole…. Sandoval is utterly worthless…. The team as a whole could hardly look worse at the plate….
They’re lucky to be where they are.
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Posted in Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Matt Cain, NL West, NLCS, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, World Series |
20 Backtalkers »Apparently, the Giants brain trust is actually exhibiting something resembling sanity. I just saw that the Giants were gonna swap Cain and Sanchez, allowing Cain to start Game Three (on I’m guessing four days rest?) at home, and having Sanchez pitch on his normal rest?
….There’s not much difference between Cain and Sanchez when it comes to who pitches better on longer rest, but Cain will wind up with 10 days off between appearances, double the norm. Sanchez will have six days of rest.
So, it appears it is simply a move to split up the lefty-righty starters, which (actually) makes sense. Anything you can do to derail the Phillies offense, which is outstanding.
Here’s Baggardly, for what it’s worth:
…. Plenty of reasons why this makes sense:
– Sanchez, not Cain will have to deal with Citizen’s Bank Ballpark, which is kind of a bandbox. The Phillies hit 94 homers at home this year, compared to 72 on the road…and Cain is slightly more of a flyball pitcher than Sanchez.
— Sanchez has been flat out better the last few weeks. He was 4-1 with a 1.01 ERA in Sept/Oct, compared to Cain’s 3-1, 3.29. Sanchez also struck out 11 and gave up just two hits over 7 1/3 in a 3-2 Game 3 win in Atlanta (although Cain was very good in Game 2, as well).
— Bochy’s also mentioned that he wanted to “break up the righties.”
— Sanchez won in Philly in August, allowing one earned and two hits over eight innings.
I’m trying to arrange to go to one of the games. At the moment, it looks like the Wednesday game would be the most likely, but, until I get to the weekend, I really can’t say. Anybody who has an idea where I might get some good seats for me and one friend for any one of these three games, send me an email or a comment. I’d appreciate it. 
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Posted in Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Matt Cain, NL West, NLCS, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, Wild Card, World Series |
34 Backtalkers »The Giants have made their decision:
The Giants this morning will announce a Division Series roster that does not include pitcher Barry Zito, the team’s highest-paid player, a source said Wednesday night, several hours after manager Bruce Bochy said either Madison Bumgarner or Tim Lincecum would start a potential Game 4 in Atlanta.
Zito’s exclusion is not surprising, given his performance in Saturday’s possible division-clinching game against San Diego at AT&T Park. In a broader sense, this is stunning for a player who was given $126 million over seven years not only to pitch the Giants into the postseason, but also to be a face of the franchise in the post-Barry Bonds era.
It’s only stunning in that it is an admission of failure by Brian Sabean and team ownership; something that we Giants fans are hardly accustomed to. The outrageous contract they gave to an already declining Barry Zito four years ago –a contract that was an albatross almost from the minute it was signed– represents the very worst trait of Brian Sabean; he over-values proven major league players. This issue is one of the biggest complaints you’ll hear at OBM, so, for him to admit failing is pretty surprising. He never admits failure.
Kudos to Sabean and the rest of the Giants braintrust for being willing to bite the bullet.
UPDATE: Speaking about the use of replay….
There is no doubt that an effective and timely use of replay is available. It is as easy as having an umpire in a booth watching a HD broadcast. One of two simple options are available under that scenario. Either the HD ump has the ability to notify the umpire crew chief of an obvious mistake, (such as Torres’ foul/triple), or each team is allowed two challenges per game. That’s it. You could limit the challenges or not, it doesn’t matter, because each team is only allowed TWO PER GAME.
{Of course, the NFL chooses to limit what is challengeable, which is not only absurd –as it serves no real point– but, in fact, acts to undermine the effectiveness of the challenge system. Any play could change a win to a loss, and a phantom holding call on an 80-yard touchdown run is just as damaging/rewarding as a missed catch or fumble.}
Don’t bother talking to me about the time of the games, or the integrity of the game, or the built in fallibility of the men in blue. All of these arguments are flat-out absurd. There would be no significant impact to the length of the games. We already have delays when the umps gather together to discuss their limited ability to recall what they may or may not have seen; and these delays are happening while Tim McCarver is on television showing us over and over that the call was obviously and completely wrong, and anyone can see that it was.
The integrity of the game is harmed by allowing mistakes by umpires to be treated as a part of the game. The reason umpires are part if the game at all, is because the players, acting in their own self-interest, cannot be trusted to always tell it like it is. The objective umpire is the arbiter of whether the man is safe or out, whether it was a ball or a strike. There is no value added by allowing an umpires mistakes (or God forbid, his bias) negatively impact a game.
It is stubborn, pig-headedness that is preventing MLB from resolving this glaring problem, and the game is suffering because of it.
UPDATE: Via Baseball Musings, there has been an effort to set up a meeting between MLB officials, umpires, and the players:
…. Umpires’ profiles have increased in the past year, largely due to a series of missed calls in last year’s playoff games. This season, umpire Jim Joyce’s call denied Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game only added to the focus and reignited a debate about expanding instant replay. Nearly a dozen players interviewed for this story told ESPN.com that relations between the two parties are deteriorating.
…. What the players would like to address, two player representatives said, is the growing concern among players about poor communication with umpires and what players see as a failure of accountability and transparency in the grading and evaluation of umpires.
…. (The Philadelphia Phillies’ Jimmy) Rollins said he’s noticed a change in the umpires’ patience this year. Often, he said, players aren’t allowed to question a call or get clarification about a rule because the umpire refuses to engage in conversation. Rollins also said that if players show too much emotion, like flipping a bat or shaking their head, they are much more apt to be thrown out of games than in past years. Other players echoed his thoughts.
“We’re supposed to yell at you, you know that?” Rollins said of the umps. “We’re trying to get every inch we can. You make the call, but you don’t have to keep looking back at me or antagonize and throw me out from the field while I’m in the dugout.
“It’s like umpires are taking it more personal these days. I don’t know what it was like back in the day, but looking at the footage, they’d get in these guys faces and ream them out. And umpires would stand there and when it was over they’d walk away. You’d really have to do something to get thrown out.”
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Barry Zito, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Cy Young, Matt Cain, NL West, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, Wild Card, World Series |
23 Backtalkers »Tim Kawakami wonders if the Giants can complete one of the most unprecedented and frankly improbable collapses in baseball history:
…. They can’t run and they had better not hide.
The Giants and their fans are backed into a corner today, the final day of the regular season, and there is no denying the anxiety and fear that accompanies this situation.
Could they really blow this?
Well, yeah, they could. The failures of the Giants’ brain-trust are catching up to them all at once.
The failure of Bochy and Sabean to adequately prepare Matt Cain for his penultimate start, allowing him to come into the game amped out of his gourd, unable to corral his emotions and his pitches.
The failure of Righetti and Bochy to figure out a way calm him down once the game began.
The failure of anyone on the team to recognize that the Gonzalez at-bat was the game-decider, and that, in that moment, an unintentional-intentional walk was the way out of that early jam.
The failure of the Giants starters in these first two starts is simply staggering. The Padres came out of September having scored 81 runs in the entire month of September, and to allow them to hang up a 10-spot in the first two games in as unexpected and disappointing as I can imagine.
The failure of Bochy and Sabean to realize that they had to set up their rotation so that Zito wouldn’t pitch again this season has come back and bit them in the ass, bit them hard.
Much like Dusty Baker’s decision to start Livan Hernandez in Game Seven of the 2002 World Series, a decision that ignored statistics and instead was based on “veteran” bullshit and favoritism; the “decision” to allow Zito to start that game yesterday was wrong-headed, wrong and foolish and lazy. And, just like Hernandez, Zito put the team in an immediate hole, one that they could not overcome.
And now, the Giants send out Jonathan Sanchez, who will almost certainly lead the league in walks –coming into today, Sanchez is second to Ubaldo Jimenez 91-92– against a team that has proven to be willing to take pitches from the Giants pitchers all season. This game will be decided by strike one, simple as that.
It is worth noting that –for whatever reason– the umpiring in the season series between these two teams has been one-sided and inconsistent. The Padres starters have benefited from a far more generous strike zone than the Giants starters have, these last two games have been no exception; and consequently the Giants hitters have had to expand their strike zones in a way that the Padres hitters simply have not had to deal with.
Given that, Sanchez will have to give in right from the start. Just throw the ball right down the pipe and get that 0-1 count. Otherwise, the Giants will lose this game. Simple as that.
If Sanchez is electric, or, God forbid, the hitters erupt, these faliures will all be forgotten. All will be right in the world of the Giants. If the Giants have to go to San Diego, well, it’ll be Lincecum, at least. But it would still be an unprecedented and historic collapse.
UPDATE: Posey goes yard bottom of the eighth, Giants lead 3-0!!!
UPDATE: One out in the ninth!!
UPDATE: Two down!!
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Posted in Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey, Matt Cain, NL West, Tim Lincecum, Wild Card, World Series |
32 Backtalkers »This has got to be one of the greatest in-season turnarounds in baseball history. A team that is essentially 35% different from the team that started the season, a team that was six games back in mid-August, a team that lost it’s offensive catalyst with two weeks to go in the season….
That team is now one win away from clinching the NL West, and possibly hosting a first round playoff series.
Oh, and by the way…. this team is featuring possibly the greatest young pitching staff of the last twenty years.
So, Giants’ fans…. Did you wish for the team to flounder so you could usher in a new regime? Or, did you do what I did, and stupidly scream, cajole and root for a win, night after night?
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Posted in Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey, Cy Young, Matt Cain, NL West, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, Wild Card, World Series |
205 Backtalkers »
