Heeding Hundley’s advice
Matt Cain appears to be back as a consistently good starting pitcher, and part of the credit goes to backup catcher Nick Hundley for a change he all but ordered Cain to make.
Hundley was catching Cain against the Diamondbacks on April 12, two days after Buster Posey got hit in the helmet by a pitch and a day after Posey went on the concussion disabled list, when Hundley noticed some great sinking movement on Cain’s two-seam fastball.
“Nick came out in the Arizona start and said, ‘Whenever I want a fastball and put the number down, throw the two-seamer,’ ” Cain said. “I went with it.”
Cain allowed one run in five innings in a 6-2 Giants victory to start a run of four solid starts. With five more innings of one-run ball Saturday night, Cain has allowed just three runs in his past 23 innings. Erick Aybar’s fourth-inning RBI single ended Cain’s 11-inning shutout streak.
Cain explained that he rarely relied on the two-seam fastball, which has movement and sink, because his power four-seam fastball had natural run. But after returning from his various arm injuries, Cain left a lot of those four-seamers over the plate, and they got crushed.
The two-seamers are slower — usually 88 or 89 mph — but their movement has made them highly effective for Cain, who also credited Hundley and Posey for getting him to mix his pitches more and get him out of his “comfort zone,” making him less predictable.
Cain will carry a 2.30 ERA, ninth best in the National League, into his next scheduled start at Cincinnati on Friday night.