Matt Cain Trade Rumors Greatly Exaggerated

Matt Cain is making it just about impossible for the Giants to trade him.  He improved to 6-1 tonight and lowered his ERA to 2.31.  His peripheral numbers aren’t nearly so good, so I suspect that some of Cain’s success this year is the law of averages making up for his 2007 and 2008 seasons when he went a combined 15-30 with ERA’s of 3.65 and 3.76, which are pretty good in today’s high offense game, because no one told the Giants’ hitters they were playing in the modern era.

The thing to remember about Cain is that while he’s now in his 4th full season, he’s still only 24 this year.  Young players tend to get better.

I do have worries, though.   While Cain has not thrown a particularly high number of innings the last three years (608.1 total, or an average of 202.2 IP per year), he’s thrown a lot of pitches.  He was second in the NL last year (behind only teammate Tim Lincecum — Is Bruce Bochy a great manager, or what?  Two losing seasons, but that’s not stopping him from wearing his young aces into the ground), 11th in 2007 and 14th in 2006.  Generally, bad things happen when pitchers under age 25 are overworked.

On the other hand, a lot of people in baseball think that Cain has the right body type (currently listed as 6′3″ & 246 lbs) and the right motion to eat up a lot of innings.  On the other hand, rumors have surfaced that in the Spring of this year, Giants’ scouts were concerned about the drop-off in his stuff.  On the other hand, he’s been pitching great during the regular season.

Just how good is Cain?  He’s pretty good.  He has benefitted somewhat from pitching in a pitcher’s park.  He has a career 3.40 ERA at home and 3.92 ERA on the road.  What team in baseball would not want a 24 year old pitcher who’s already an established major league starter and has a career 3.92 road ERA?  None that I can think of.

As a Giants’ fan, I’ve grown attached to Cain, and I’m thrilled that he finally appears to be having his break out season.  I hope the Giants keep him at least until late July of the season before he becomes a free agent.  If the Giants are still in the toilet then, they can unload him for more prospects than his future career will be worth.  So are the ways of baseball.