Cain Is Able: Why Matt Cain Should Start The All-Star Game

All-Star rosters were revealed Sunday morning. It should surprise no one that the two representatives from the San Francisco Giants are pitchers Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain.

One of them should be given the honor of starting for the National League.

And it should be Matt Cain.

Yes, Lincecum is the reigning National League Cy Young winner. And yes, he has picked up right where he left off last season. As of July 5, he led the major leagues with 141 strikeouts and was third in ERA at 2.23. He also has an on-going streak of 23 innings without allowing a run (a streak which includes 18 in a row without letting a base runner past second base), and is 9-2 for a Giants team that has been one of the biggest surprises of the 2009 season.

But Cain is also 9-2, and as of July 5, he was fourth in the majors with a 2.48 ERA. While his strikeout total of 88 isn’t nearly as flashy as Lincecum's, and his ERA is slightly worse than fellow All-Star Dan Haren of the Diamondbacks, Cain is more deserving of the honor of starting the game.

Why?

Because up until this season, Matt Cain was the best pitcher in the game today who the average baseball fan had never heard of. In the 2007 and 2008 seasons, Cain posted a combined ERA of 3.71. Opponents hit only .222 against him in 2006, the third lowest batting average against in the NL that season. His 217 and 2/3 innings pitched last season ranked fifth in the National League.

Unfortunately, Cain did all of this for a Giants team whose batting order was about as scary as a cheesy haunted house at a traveling carnival. His combined win-loss record in 2007 and 2008 was an unimpressive 15-30, largely due to getting some of the worst run support in baseball. In 2007, he received just 78 runs of support during his 32 starts from the Giants "offense." In 2008, the support was even worse, as he got only 76 runs of support during his 34 starts. He received two fewer runs of support than the year before despite pitching 17 2/3 more innings.

To put it bluntly, Matt Cain has been the unluckiest pitcher in baseball for most of the last three years.

The 2007 and 2008 Giants trotted out an everyday lineup of fringe major leaguers, half of whom were past the primes of their careers, the other half due to have primes shorter than the time it takes for Usain Bolt to run 100 meters. Ray Durham, Rich Aurillia, Jose Castillo, and Omar Vizquel were regular names on Bruce Bochy’s lineup card during those unforgettable seasons.

Seriously.

While it is true that Lincecum had the same lousy players backing him up during this period, it is also true that a hallmark of bad teams, no matter the sport, is that they are consistently inconsistent. Lincecum’s first full season was 2008. He went 18-5 with a 2.62 ERA and, as I already mentioned, won the Cy Young Award. He also received 124 runs of support during his 227 innings over the course of 33 starts.

In other words, despite pitching only 9 1/3 innings more than Cain last season, he got 48 more runs of support.

Though the honor of starting is supposed to go to the best pitcher from the first half of the season, the fact that home field advantage in the World Series is also on the line during the game dictates that it should also go to a pitcher from a team in contention. That eliminates Haren from contention, and it should leave NL manager Charlie Manuel with a choice among the two Giants hurlers, whose win-loss records and low ERA’s separate them from the other National League options.

There is little doubt that Lincecum is a slightly better all-around pitcher than Cain, and he is definitely the more obvious choice among the two. But Lincecum has also been luckier than Cain, too.

For once, it'd be nice to see a little luck and support go Cain's way. He deserves the recognition, and he should be given the chance to formally introduce himself to the fans of major league baseball by taking the mound first during the
"midsummer classic."