Cain and Billingsley

Matt Cain and Chad Billingsley each won their 9th games tonight to lead the NL.  Cain is now 9-1; Billingsley is 9-3.  It looks like that at age 24 both have arrived.

I was thinking after Cain’s last start that this was going to be his year.  He allowed 4 runs, all earned, in a little over six innings and won the game.  It was the second time he’d allowed 4 runs in a game and won.  This more or less didn’t happen the last two years, when he went a combined 15-30 with ERAs of 3.65 and 3.76.

Today’s game was his best outing of the season.  He allowed 1 earned run over nine innings on 4 hits, 0 BB’s and 9 K’s. His ERA dropped to 2.39.

If Matt Cain has turned a corner on his command, he will win a lot of games for at least the next couple of seasons.

Billingsley now has a 2.72 ERA and better strikeout and walk numbers than Cain.  Billingsley has 93 K’s and 39 BB’s in 92.2 IP; Cain has 68 K’s and 34 BB’s in 86.2 IP.

It’ll be interesting to see who has the better career.  In terms of where each is now, it’s pretty hard to call.