Since I posted my short rant about traditional stats being insufficient, I’ve started and stopped probably a dozen different blog posts. I just couldn’t get going. The 30Q/30T got tedious. “Will player x do y?” got boring. I’ll return to it, but I want more of the season under the proverbial belt so I can delve into some in-season questions (Will Joey Votto Have More Walks Than the Chicago White Sox? / How Much Do I Hate Joeburg for Having Matt Harvey?)
That having been said, this post is to discuss the sudden struggles of The Horse, Matt Cain. Cain is a shining example of the Small Sample Size Theater that’s going on right now. This is a time of year where Joey Votto has more walks than an entire roster, but there are five reasons why Matt Cain is getting his lid blown off in, like, every start.
1. Something’s Not Right With His Fastball
The mainstay of every pitcher’s arsenal is his fastball. It’s the ball thrown more often than not. It is the basis around which every other pitch is thrown. The key to a good fastball is that it deftly sets up a changeup, a pitch which looks essentially identical but runs slower. The idea of a pitcher is to deceive, and the fastball-changeup combo is a prime example of this deception. When a fastball loses velocity, the effectiveness of the exchange is diminished. Outside of this dynamic, any dummy can tell you that a slow pitch that doesn’t move a whole heck of a lot is easier to hit than a faster pitch.
According to fangraphs.com’s Pitchf/x, which tracks all kinds of incredible statistics with pitching, Cain’s fastball velocity this year is sitting at 90.6 for the 4 seamer and 90.7 for the two seamer. This is a half mile per hour less than last year, which isn’t a huge deal. Between 2009 and 2010, he lost a full mph on his 4-seam fastball—but he subsequently gained 1.5 mph on his two-seam fastball. In the timing of the baseball world, the loss of this half-mph puts him down into average velocity, about 90 mph.
Why is this happening? Giants fans everywhere hope that it’s a mechanics issue, or a byproduct of small sample size, or any pile of things that aren’t what I think it is: fatigue. Cain’s nickname is The Horse because of the Giants’ ability and propensity to ride him. Since 2009, he’s been in the top 10 for innings pitched every single year. Adding on top of this the Giants’ two deep playoff runs, one can easily see that there are a lot of miles on that arm. The speed for his pitches are down across the board, but a diminishing fastball velocity raises red flags because losing a fastball can lead to a scattering of your established game plan.
2. Pure, Plain Bad Luck
For years, Matt Cain has been the “exception that proves the rule” as the nonsensical idiom states. Two indicators of pitcher luck, BABIP and LOB% have been insanely out of the norm that for years people in some circles considered Cain an aberration. BABIP is short for “Batting Average on Balls in Play,” and the league average is about .300. It is a measure of batting average solely on balls that end up in the field (I.e. no home runs, no strikeouts). It is an informal measure of luck because when someone hits a ball on a rope in a direction, it can be pure luck that the 1B is there to catch it as opposed to it going 3 feet to his left into the outfield. Excepting 2008, Cain has had a very low BABIP. This can be attributed to Cain getting a lot of ground balls. Putting those into play are less dangerous than putting fly balls or line drives into play, and this year his GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio) has plummeted from 1.07 in 2011, 0.90 in 2012 and 0.69 in 2013. It means that so far he has gone from giving up more groundballs than flyballs (VERY GOOD) to essentially 7 groundballs for every flyball (NOT SO GOOD). Cain is getting fewer groundballs, which lead to fewer easy plays, which lead to a lower BABIP.
Another measure of luck is the LOB% (left on base percentage), which is a measure of how many runners allowed on base are allowed to score. In theory, a player should have the same propensity for letting a batter get a hit, so the idea of “reaching back” and allowing people on base but not allow them to score is fallacious. Last year, Cain had a nearly 80% strand rate, which meant that 4 out of every 5 base runners he allowed stayed on the base paths. This year, he is at 56%. This means that for every 100 base runners Cain allows, 24 more will score than last year. That is clearly an unacceptable change in statistics. Cain is getting extremely unlucky in this regard, as well.
There has been a theory floated as to why Cain has had such a consistently high strand rate: the stretch. When there are runners on base, pitchers shorten their delivery to limit stolen bases. The idea for such a high strand rate is that Cain pitches better out of the stretch, with runners on base. This year he is not having the same success.
3. THE LONG BALL (for the Love of God Stop Giving Up Dingers)
When I started looking at Cain’s fangraphs and baseball-reference pages (full disclosure I do most of my research at these two sites), a number stood out to me that didn’t seem right at all. I double checked and looked through it again and Matt Cain has a 15.6% home-run-to-fly-ball ratio. 15.6% of his flyballs generated land on the other side of the outfield wall. In 2010 it was 3.7% (8.4% in 2010). When Cain is getting hit he is getting hit hard.
Taking it back to basics, and taking HBP and IBB out of the picture, there are limited outcomes to an at bat—a strikeout, walk, fly ball, line drive or a ground ball. Cain’s walk and strikeout rate have stayed fairly consistent. The only problem is that his line drive and flyball rates are up significantly, and a significantly higher percentage of those hits are going for home runs. That’s why Cain is giving up these massive innings. It’s a confluence of him failing to leave hitters on base, mostly via the long ball.
4. No Deception
As mentioned earlier, a pitcher’s MO is pure deception. They intend to make sure a batter is confident he will hit a ball well, then make sure that doesn’t happen. Again turning to Pitchf/x, we can see the answers as to what’s wrong with Matt Cain: he’s not missing bats. Already not a great strikeout pitcher, Cain is failing to get deception on his pitches in 2013. The 2013 line is chilling because everything that is good for Cain is down and everything that is good for ne’er-do-wells like the LA Dodgers lineup are up. The numbers I am throwing up here assume that Cain is throwing 100 pitches a game (for the sake of turning the statistics into easily digestible numbers). Cain’s ability to garner swings is about the same as his career—45% swing percentage versus a 47.4% career. This mean Cain gets about 45 swings per game. While it is not significant, it is still down. Unless Cain is pounding the strike zone, this leads to longer at bats and shorter outings before he tires. Cain is actually doing this marginally better this year than in his career (about 1% better). The issue is that a pitcher wants hitters to swing at balls out of the zone and hold up on balls in the zone. The Horse simply isn’t doing this at the same clip as he has done in his career.
Players are swinging at about 4 fewer balls outside the zone per game this year as compared to his career. This accounts for an entire walk. This is another baserunner and another person for Cain to add to his ER tally when someone tees off on him this year, which suddenly is a thing that happens. The good side of this is that when people are swinging out of the zone, they are hitting the ball at a 10% lower clip than in the past. The only problem is they aren’t swinging.
When they are swinging, it is at Cain’s balls in the strike zone. His percentage this year is pretty much on par with his career, but his contact percentage within the zone is atrocious. This is about 7% higher than his career average. This is an incredible, incredible spike and lies at the core of Cain’s issues. His overall contact percentage is about the same, but many more are coming from within the zone.
So far we have seen 4 factors, which show that fewer strikeouts are happening along with more walks and MANY more home runs. Why is this not a cause for concern?
5. The Small Sample Size!
Every very good pitcher will have a couple of horrific starts per year. Hopefully, Cain got his out of the way early. Looking at his statistics will make you want to hurl; 7.15 ERA, yikes. All the junk I brought up above, egad. The only thing is that Cain has had two very good games (combined 2 runs in 13 IP) and two truly horrendous games (16 ER in 9.2 IP). There isn’t much cause for concern here because the Cardinals are a very good lineup and the Brewers went on a spree against Giants pitching. It’s a case of wrong-place-wrong-time for Matt Cain. He is starting to show the signs of breaking down, and a couple of rotation skips to extend his shelf life may be in order, but it isn’t the time to panic.
Giants fans are understandably nervous about Matt Cain so far this season. So far, they’ve seen Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum turn into pumpkins right before their eyes. While Cain does show signs of aging, he has turned in two very good performances and two very bad performances. If this happened in late July, the only noteworthy thing would be “Cain has two bad outings.” It would be swept under the rug and never heard of again. This article was not intended to be doom and gloom, but rather highlight the reason why Matt Cain is getting tattooed this year using statistics. Cain is on my favorite team and my fantasy baseball team, so I’ve followed or outright watched all of these starts. I can tell you that this all fleshes with the eyeball test, as well. Cain is letting runners on, not effectively holding them, then giving up bombs. He’s not giving up a double here, a triple there; he’s piling on the baserunners and allowing an XBH… in two out of four games. After 20 more starts, I doubt anyone will be worried about these starts in April.
Words: 1,872
Remaining: 336,622 (336622 is a pretty neat number, not gonna lie…)
No comments:
Post a Comment