What an amazing game! Matt Cain throws the 22nd Perfect Game in MLB History. 14 K's to boot! First perfect game in Giants history, 128 years of franchise history. Many great Giants pitchers, Mathewson, Hubbell, Marichal, Perry, Lincecum, but Cain is the first one with a perfect game. He Cained the Astros.
I tweeted a number of these:
I've been waiting for this since Matt Cain threw a 2-hitter complete game with 8 K's on 9/9/2005. We've all been waiting for this no-hitter. YES! PERFECTO!
Chris Stratton is probably kicking himself right now that he didn't delay signing one day (he was here yesterday but said that he was flying to Phoenix immediately).
What an ice-cold assassin Matt Cain is! Worth every penny we committed to him!
Giants no-hitters I have listened to: Halicki, Montefusco, Dirty, and now Cain's Perfecto.
I am feeling verklempt now...
Truly special. 22nd in MLB history, first in Giants, in 128 years.
ReplyDeleteI always knew he had it in him at some point to throw the no-no. To go and do THIS.
Yep, I'm on cloud nine.
Ha, I went with 128 because Fleming was saying it all night. Then I start seeing 130 years and heard it this morning on KNBR. Now I read Baggerly and he says 129.
DeleteChecking out Baseball-Reference.com, they all appear to have a claim to be right. 128 years as a Giants franchise. But they were earlier the New York Gothams for two years, so 130 years work too. But that first season was a partial season, it seems, at least less games played, so maybe Baggerly is referring 129 full seasons (though if we go by that, we have to remove all the strike marred seasons, so maybe this one don't work).
Exactly! Right?!? That game I referenced, should have given a link - http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN200509090.shtml - 2-hitter, 1 walk, 8 strikeouts, complete game, and he was only 20 years old at the time, though almost 21. I was sweating out college finals and programming through the night, pimples and female relationships, when I was 21. He had a near no-hitter, near perfect game. That's when the clock on waiting for this started for me.
It has been tantalizingly close many times over the years, but this seems right, feels right, good point in time for it to happen.
Yeah, I'm on cloud nine too, couldn't get to sleep then woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. I'm a mess this morning, but a happy mess.
The more I'm thinking of it, I think 130 is the right number.
DeleteCAINER!!!!
ReplyDeleteFirst night with our "healthy" lineup as bochy dubbed it and we win 10-0 w a perfect game, not to shabby boys
One thought that came to me was all those Giants fans who blogged on and on about how Cain wanted to leave, how he hated our offense, how he was gone. When I told them that since he didn't grow up following a team that the Giants were HIS team and would want to stay plus his family, they told me I didn't know how he felt. Yet somehow they "knew" how he felt.
DeleteAnd it has been revealed and discussed over and over since his signing (heard it again on the radio this morning from Kuip) that he didn't want to leave, never wanted to entertain the thought of leaving, only did it because this was the business side of baseball, but he really wanted to stay.
Yeah, our lineup is shaping up really well now, some people are starting to get it going, others have been going for a while, and didn't you feel a little sad that Nate sat, yet we knew that he had to sit, these are our guys now, our lineup.
However, I saw somewhere (DrB I think) someone put Sandoval batting in the bottom of the order. No way, no how, that's only temporary, he's going to be in the middle of this and soon, probably once Theriot cools off, it will be Blanco, Cabrera, Sandoval, Posey, Pagan, then mix and match of the rest.
What a great time to be a Giants fan!
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a great time to be a Giants fan!
DeleteEl Lefty Malo had a great post on this, check it out: http://www.leftymalo.com/2012/06/the_perfect_man_for_a_perfect_game.php
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to a video of every out of the game: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=22272193
ReplyDeleteEnjoy! Even though I knew the ending, I couldn't help but tear up at the end.
It was nice to see the last out, I listened on the radio, and saw the last out on the news, but for that one, it went so fast that it looked like Belt came off first base too fast on the out, but when I saw this replay, he clearly had his foot on. Whew!
I was just thinking, that until we got Buster Posey on our team, we never had a World Series Championship or Perfect no-hitter, and he has played barely over one season in terms of games and playing time, since he joined us.
ReplyDeleteJust saying...
Just noticed that Koufaz was 26 when he had his first no-hitter and Cain is only 27 himself right now, basically one year difference in age.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking that it would have been cool if Cain had thrown the 18th no-hitter in franchise history. It can be his if he throws 4 more no-hitters...
ReplyDeleteSomebody went and updated the Giants wikipedia page with Matt Cain's no-no, but neglected to update any of the other information pertaining to it, like moving the counters up by one and stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt was dreadful seeing the info messed up like that so I went in and made sure all the information has been updated with the latest.
Let me know if I missed anything, I upped all the counters, the person who did it didn't put the numbers on Bochy, plus I added some details on Cain's no-no that I thought was interesting, in line with the other interesting notes already there.
Hopefully all the people who thought the Giants should trade away Matt Cain are now thanking their appropriate deity that Sabean did not listen to them.
ReplyDeleteOh, Huff it...
ReplyDeleteAccording to reports, Huff fell on his knee jumping over the railing to get to the celebration on the mound, and will need an MRI to see what's up, as he is pretty sore right now. Could go on the DL, leaving Bochy's plans to use Huff at DH null and void.
However, I've been wondering how to get Nate's bat in the lineup since he's been hot lately, when he got to play when Melky was laid up, so this might be a blessing in disguise, at least for us Nate-the-Greaters.
I think that Bochy will at least give Nate first shot at the DH now, assuming Huff DLs, though I can see the three outfielders rotating into getting a rest game at DH with Nate starting in RF. Plus even an actual day of rest with Nate starting. That could cover up to 6 of the 9 AL games, giving Nate 6 starts.
I've seen a suggestion that Posey could be used there. For the Zito starts where Zito-Whisperer Hanchez can do his magic, I would think that they would want to give Posey a real rest, given that he got burned out a little earlier this season and his hitting went down with him, so no DH there. Maybe on Bumgarner starts, Posey can catch a break from catching by DHing and Hanchez gets an extra start. That's 1-2 starts, covering the 3 that Nate don't get in the scenario above.
Should be enough to give Nate a good number of (7-8) starts and ABs, while giving the OF and Posey some days off as well, particularly Melky, whose bad hammy put him on the bench, we need to get him away from recurring injuries there, like Durham used to get.
Oh, Zito it...
ReplyDeleteJust had to give up the Grand Salami. If he could have kept it to a single, the Giants might have had a better chance of tying it in the late innings.
Good for Belt though, perfect timing for him to get hot. 4 for 10 with 7 RBI in the 3 game series with the Astros. Plus 2 walks and only 1 K. Very nice breakout, just in time because Melky, Pagan, Blanco was falling back to their career norms, we need others to get hot and keep the offense going.
I posted this on Fangraphs, one of the articles on Cain:
ReplyDeleteCain’s beauty is that he is a right-handed crafty lefty. He has that “stuff” that allows him to have a much below average BABIP than the vast majority of pitchers pitching today.
And what people who don’t know much about Cain need to know is that Cain has been like this from the get-go. Sure, he has improved himself over the years – in particularly, dropping his walk rate to minuscule levels – but he has been a no-hit pitcher from the beginning, just waiting for it to happen. He is a pitcher, not a thrower, almost preternaturally as he was like this when he was only 20 and joining the Giants, so he’ll go for the strikeout if it’s there, but he trusts his stuff enough that should they make contact, it’ll be weak contact most of the time.
And this is not surprising to most Giants fans. In his third MLB start, he had a complete game 2 hitter with only 1 walk and 8 strikeouts. The GameScore of that game? 86, not that far away, but ultimately almost 7 years away from this perfect game. Unfortunately, 1 of those hits was a homer, so it was not a shutout, which might have gotten more national attention, but still, it got a lot of Giants fans attention. And without that homer, his GameScore would have been 90. Ironic since he has rarely given up homers over his long career, much lower HR/FB than other pitchers as well (as BABIP).
The shocker for long time Giants fans is the perfect game. That is the big surprise as he had around a 4.0 BB/9 average in his early years. However, he has steadily improved, to mid-2′s the past couple of seasons, and now mid-1′s. Maturity and experience, paying off, so it is not a surprise now, but relative to where he was 7 years ago, big surprise.
The odd thing is that there were a lot of Giants fans who wanted to trade away Matt the past few years because these fans wanted more offense. Us who wanted to keep him knew that he was too valuable to trade away, as pitching is the key to the playoffs and World Series championships. Luckily Sabean knows this too, as he has built the Giants around pitching and fielding (among the leaders in DRS per Fielding Bible the past few seasons).
The Giants – potentially Team of the 2010′s Decade – is built off of stout pitching and Cain has been the stoutest of them all, Lincecum included. And with this game, now everybody knows it.