CAIN STILL SEARCHING FOR HIS OLD FORM
San Francisco veteran is still searching for himself, but may be looking for the wrong pitcher
PHOENIX — Matt Cain has spent four years grinding through rehab and toiling on the mound while trying to rediscover his old form.
Maybe he’s going about it the wrong way. Maybe the old form isn’t coming back. Maybe Cain should stop trying to be Cain.
Maybe he should try to be Ryan Vogelsong, instead.
An all too frequent moment arrived in the third inning of Cain’s start this week against the Milwaukee Brewers. He got two quick strikes on Domingo Santana. Then a pitch got fouled back. Another fastball inside resulted in a chopper through the third base coaches’ box. Then a ball in the dirt. Another too far in. A slider that missed off the outside for ball four.
Another two-strike count that spit the bait.
And oddly enough, that confrontation might have been progress for Cain. Here’s why:
Back in 2012, his last productive season, Cain held hitters to a .117 average on at-bats that ended with any twostrike count. While pitchers across the board are much more successful when they get to two strikes, Cain was crazy good in those 409 at-bats. The .117 average was far better than the NL average of .175. It was the second lowest of any full-time major league starter, behind only the Rangers’ Yu Darvish.
Last season? Getting to two strikes held almost no benefit whatsoever. Opponents batted .290 in at-bats that started with an 0-2 count. The league batted .165 in those counts.
Cain’s success was always hard to explain. He didn’t have Randy Johnson’s wipeout slider or Tim Lincecum’s diving changeup. He always had that extra giddy-up on his fastball, but never possessed the classic put-away pitch. Yet with two strikes, for most of his career, and especially in 2012, he was as lethal as any starting pitcher in the majors.
“For me, I always felt confident throwing four pitches in those counts,” Cain said. “That’s what helped me, I think. Guys weren’t able to sit fastball, or anything else, with two strikes. I tried to use that to my advantage.”
So what happened? Why was Cain, despite only losing a mph or two off his low 90s fastball, unable to put hitters away last season?
“Some of it is location and not being able to execute a pitch, and was having a really hard time throwing away to right-handers,” Cain said. “I feel I’ve been able to smooth that out a lot more. I just wasn’t putting guys away with it, whether it was a bad sequence or missing location. It was probably a little of both.”
Here’s where Vogelsong, who was recently granted his release from the Minnesota Twins, could serve as Cain’s spirit animal.
Vogelsong refused to give in. It didn’t matter if it cost him an extra 15 pitches an inning. When he got to two strikes, he went out of the strike zone. He nibbled. He tried to let the opponent get himself out. Major league hitters being pretty darn talented, they often didn’t chase and those 0-2 counts went full. Sometimes they loaded the bases. But Vogelsong would scrap and scrap, even after they backed him into a corner. Sometimes the inning would blow up. Often times, he’d find a way out of it.
He’d labor the entire time out there. But better to run out of pitches in 4 2/3 innings than pitch your team out of the game. When you’re a No.5 starter, that can be all the club asks of you.
For a pitcher like Cain who was effectively wild in his youth, he heard it over and over from coaches: be aggressive and throw strikes. No wonder he kept doing it even as he kept paying for those two-strike mistakes across the heart of the plate.
“Yeah, I’ll get in that habit of throwing the ball over the plate too much,” Cain said. “You want to keep it going, get those guys back into the dugout. But it’s not a good thing when you’re over more than a third of the plate.”
Could a little of Vogelsong’s stubbornness be just what he needs?
“A lot of that comes with confidence in yourself, too,” he said. “I know I can nitpick, but that also means having the confidence that you can make a good pitch that’s a strike when it’s 2-2 or 3-2.”
Cain will have to make an adjustment soon. The question isn’t whether the Giants will open the season with him as their No.5 starter. The question will be how long his leash would be if he struggles.
Cain does not want to pull them toward making a difficult decision, but his checkered results this spring have not made the questions go away. He got hit hard in the first inning of a 6-4 exhibition victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, and although he settled down toward the end of his four-run, five-inning afternoon, he recorded some of his outs off the barrel and two more courtesy of third baseman Aaron Hill’s diving start to a double play.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy framed it as progress. So did Cain, who continues to work on making adjustments after four seasons of injuries and ineffective starts.
“The results weren’t something I focused on,” Cain said. “I want to make adjustments where I need to make them and know I’m still moving forward for the season. I’ve got to be confident in all the pitches I’m throwing, so I can throw anything in any count.”
The Giants haven’t stretched out anyone else in camp, although Bochy said that left-hander Ty Blach could be ready to start the season in the rotation if needed. With left-hander Will Smith possibly out for the season with a sprained elbow ligament, though, Blach might be most valuable in the bullpen.
Cain is focused on the April 7 start against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park, and nobody has told him otherwise.
“That’s the only thing I’m preparing for, that I’m ready to go 100 pitches,” he said.
The Giants do not need Cain to pitch like an ace. They only need him to scrap together serviceable starts, avoid big innings and give the team a chance to win.
They don’t need Cain to be Cain again. Maybe being a little more like Vogelsong could be enough.