Caining On Giants History

I just had a thought: Where does Cain stand among rookies all-time in Giants history? So I went looking at the Giants media guide to see where he currently stands. Here is where he is right now, in SF Giants history among rookies:

• Wins: Tied 3rd (Tied 11th franchise history)
• Games Started: Tied 8th (maybe 13th franchise history)
• IP: 7th
• Strikeouts: 3rd (4th franchise history)
• ERA: 5th
• Complete Games: Tied 18th
• Winning Percentage: 4th
• Shutouts: Tied 6th (Tied 18th franchise history)

Cain has 3 more starts left. He is tied with Bill Laskey and Ryan Jensen for 3rd. One win ties him for 2nd with John Burkett and two wins ties him for 1st with John "the Count" Montefusco. If he can win all three, he will take 1st SF history and tied for 6th franchise history with Bill Carrick (done in 1889!). In any case, the 3 games started would place him in a tie for 6th in SF Giants history with Bill Laskey, tie with Bill also for 9th franchise history.

With 3 starts, he should have about 21 IP. His next start should get him to 5th place, he only needs 6.2 IP to reach there and pass up Jim Barr. He needs only 17.0 IP to beat out Bill Laskey for 5th place in SF history and 17.2 IP to take 4th place in SF history, passing up Pete Falcone.

He only needs 5 more strikeouts to reach 2nd place and pass up John D'Aquisto, which he should do in his next game too. He is too far to reach 1st, held by John "the Count" Montefusco with 215, unless Cain can strikeout on average 18 batters per game for the next three games. Not going to happen.

He only has 1 complete game. With another one, he would tie for 10th in SF history. With two, he would tie for 9th. And with three, he would be in 9th by himself.

He also has only 1 shutout. With another one, he would be tied for 2nd place with 2 with Ron Herbel, Steve Stone, Jim Barr, and Bob Knepper. He would need to throw three CG shutouts to tie the Count.

Matt Cain: The Face of a Franchise

Cain has been incredible his last 6 starts. 5 wins. 1 ER, 2 runs, in 42.0 IP, 0.21 ERA, 15 BB, 43 K's, 19 hits, 0.81 WHIP, his ERA has fallen from 4.89 to 3.75 during these 6 starts. This was even more dominating than Lowry was last season in August. He will turn 22 years old on October 1st.

I've said it before, Cain is going to be the face of the franchise going forward, and we should hopefully get to see him pitch for us for the next 20 years or so, barring any injury. Krukow noted in his morning show that Cain has a body of a pitcher who can throw 150 pitches and the difference between his horrible start and his domination today is that he realized that he was giving baseball hitters too much respect, he thought he had to be a finesse pitcher to get MLB hitters out, but what he learned, what he got huge confidence in today, is his fastball has the stuff to make major league hitters swing and miss.

And he has been relying mainly on that fastball to get hitters out and, when his curveball and slider are working, he will have enough to come close to no-hitting the other team. He already has 5 games where he gave up only 1 hit, 2 games where he gave up only 2 hits.

His main problem has been the walkies. He has four starts with 5 or more walks, another four starts with 4 or more walks. He has only 6 starts with 1 or less walks, only 1 start with no walks.

But with his confidence in his fastball fueling his recent run of domination, he should continue to do well against other teams. He should have a breakout type of year next season where he gets the attention of a lot of teams and fans. And hopefully he and Sanchez can form a two-some tandem where they constantly out-duel the other with a great outing, Krukow noted that Sanchez has the same stuff, at the same high velocity. The two of them could form an Ace-duo for us if they can just stay healthy and not suffer from the typical maladies unproven players often have that make them underperform.