Matt Cain: The Unluckiest Pitcher Alive

Matt Cain is the unluckiest pitcher in all of baseball. His tale is one of grief, disappointment, and failure, despite being one the most talented and hardest working pitchers in major league baseball. By all accounts, he is one of the most gifted young talents in all of baseball. It was Cain, not Tim Lincecum, who was supposed to end his career with mantle full of Cy Young’s. Now it appears to be the other way around. Don’t let the results full you, though. Cain may have fallen behind in the race for the time being, but he has the stuff to come back.

I admit that this may not be the best time to present this argument considering that Cain is currently sitting on a 4.06 ERA, but he’s just starting to find his groove. After posting a 2.14 ERA through his first three starts in July, it appears to be getting back into his 2007 form. Yes, the same 2007 season that saw Cain finish with a 7-16 record.

See, run support has a funny way of distorting perception. If you were to ask the esteemed voters of the Baseball Writers Association of America what they thought of Cain’s 2007 season, they’d likely tell you that it was a colossal failure. Pose the same question to a stat head and he’ll tell you that Cain was one of the top ten pitchers in the National League. I happen to agree with the latter.

How can you not? Last season Cain posted a 3.65 ERA over 200 innings. Any perceived failure clearly resides in the hands of those around him. How else can you explain his putrid record?

Run support - or, in this case, the lack thereof. In 17 starts last season, spanning 115 innings, Cain accumulated a 2.50 ERA and 1.052 WHIP, along with 101 strike outs against 39 walks. He didn’t give up more than four runs in any of these contests. Those are Cy Young caliber numbers. Yet, Cain didn’t record a single win for his fine work. Instead he got 10 losses and seven no decisions, but that’s what happens when you only average 3.51 runs of support.

It hasn’t been quite as bad this season, the Giants offense has record an average of 3.71 runs through his first 20 starts, but the bad luck hasn’t exactly vanished. In the eight no decisions that Cain has thrown, he’s posted a line of: 53.1 IP, 2.19 ERA, 1.013 WHIP, 55 K and 18 walks. He didn’t give up more than 3 runs in any of these games. Meaning, by any standard, he should have won each contest.

At least Cain isn’t the unluckiest pitcher of all time. That distinction still belongs to Ed Walsh. In case you aren’t up on your baseball history, Walsh went 18-20 for the 1910 White Sox, despite leading the league in ERA (1.47), WHIP (.820), BB/9 (1.49), K/BB (4.23), and ERA+ (189). But, he does have some competition for the honor of unluckiest pitcher of the year.

Jay Bergman of the Washington Nationals seems to have a black cat permanently affixed to the mound when he’s out there. Since his last win on May 15^th, he has given up the following run totals: 0, 0, 4, 5, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2. Now, it isn’t unusual to lose those 4 and 5 run games, but to lose or get no decisions in the others is pretty awful. But, it’s not surprising considering he has the lowest run support in all of baseball at 1.70 runs per start.

Compare Bergman and Cain’s numbers (1-6 4.02 ERA and 5-7, 4.06 ERA) to Kyle Kendrick, who has the highest run support in the game. His ERA is 4.23, but thanks to getting over 6 runs a game from his offense he has an 8-3 record, so people think he is having a great year, which just isn’t true. Give Cain that type of run support and he would have easily made a run at the Cy Young award last season, instead he’s relegated to being the subject of articles like this.

He’ll get those Cy Young awards, he just has to get out of San Francisco first.