Cautionary Note On Matt Cain: He's a Homer

I was reading an article talking about how another pitcher was so much better than Cain, and I, like a number of other Cain enthusiasts, know about how great he pitched after his skipped start and especially after the All-Star Game last year, ace type caliber numbers.

So, as I am wont to do, I dug up numbers to throw in this guy's face and tell him a thing or two about Cain. But a very unfunny thing happened when I did this: I thought it would be interesting to do a home vs. road split after his he started to have success last season, after his skipped start, and the numbers are pretty stark and gave me pause on praising Cain until he proves otherwise. He wasn't as good as I thought he was, and perhaps, a fantasy creature created by that nurturing park, called AT&T Mays Field.

The Ugly Numbers

To say Cain loves pitching at home would be an understatement. Here are the stats:

Stat - Road - Home
ERA - 4.98 - 2.32
H/9 - 7.9 - 5.9
bb/9 - 5.0 - 3.8
k/9 - 9.1 - 8.9
k/bb - 1.8 - 2.3
HR/9 - 1.0 - 0.2
BABIP - .299 - .256

To say that Cain has done much better at home than on the road would be an understatement. More importantly, the BABIP on the road is startling because it is the mean that all pitchers fall back to, when I've been thinking that Cain is one of those special pitchers who are able to keep their BABIP low, however it is done, whether by grounders, as it is traditionally done, or keeping batters off balance with movement or off-season stuff and popping up a lot.

In addition, his bb/9 is extremely high, and not sustainable for long term success, resulting in his poor - poor for a good pitcher, OK for average pitcher - 1.8 k/bb. And the HR/9 that I thought was so good, is actually very average on the road at 1.0, which is the minimum that you want from a good pitcher.

So which is the extreme outlier, his home numbers or his road numbers? Thus far this year, his ERA is much worse at home than on the road, but if you look at his periperhals, his base value indicators, he's been very lucky on the road thus far. He has 8 walks in only 14.0 IP this season on the road, vs. only 11 strikeouts. Though no HRs and only 3 hits given up (that certainly will revert to mean there). Home stats I won't go over, it's only one game thus far (road is only two games as it is), so it is way to early to be making any pronouncements about how his 2007 compares to his 2006, but thus far the stats would seem like a continuation of the skills he showed last season: great k-rate anywhere, poor bb-rate on road but good at home, poor k/bb on road but good at home.

So this will be an interesting season for Cain. Not critical, but we will see further evidence what type of pitcher he is, the home warrior or the road pushover. If he can duplicate what he did in 2006, that would be good, the team was 9-4 in his home starts, 6-5 in his road starts. The good thing are the following: 1) pitcher's stats tend to jump around so a bad season is not necessarily a bad sign, though troubling sign, and 2) he is still very young, which some forget, only 22 years old, so he can still learn how to pitch better rather than throw well.

With vets with varying styles of success in Morris, Zito, and Ortiz around, he should be able to learn a thing or two eventually. After all, it was his excellent learning of the lessons of an old MLB pro back in his hometown that brought him to this point. If he could learn before, he can learn again.

But any pronouncement of Cain as a potential ace, me included, appears to be premature based on how starkly different his home and road numbers are, even after taking out his horrible start in 2006. And thus we must temper our enthusiasm, or at least our expectations for his success in the 2007 season, for our wunderkind, Matt Cain. But, of course, root him on. Go Giants!