When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby

05.23.2007
Separ-A-ted at Birth

Slightly off-topic, but use this however you wish next time the A’s come to town:

Jason-kendall And: Colin-Farrell

Speaking of doppelgangers, much has been made of the similarities between Tim Lincecum and Roy Oswalt. They’re short! They’re right-handed! They throw hard! They were born in months with a ‘U’! 

I understand the comparisons, but I’d like to make one closer to home. Stuff-wise, Lincecum resembles our own Matt Cain (who is three and half months younger than Lincecum). Hard riding fastball, big hook, developing change-up.

Provocative thought of the day: is it possible Lincecum is already better?

First, some background. Avid readers (as opposed to Ovid readers) of this column will know how much I bemoan pitchers giving up walks. And you also might know how much I believe luck factors into baseball. Hit the ball 400 feet on the screws but to the wrong part of the park, and you’re out (see: last night, Carlos Lee); hit the ball badly and drive in two key runs (see: Monday night, Bengie Molina).

Luck applies equally to pitchers. The trick is to minimize the chance for luck to bounce against you. One way pitchers can do this is to strike out batters. A ball not put in play is a ball that can’t bloop between fielders or take a crazy infield hop. Another way is to avoid walks. Free baserunners mean more mischief when the inevitable unlucky break comes along.

As Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus pointed out yesterday, Cain’s smashing success in April (5 starts, 35 IP, 12 hits allowed, 1.54 ERA) came with a two big dollops of luck. If you don’t want to read Sheehan’s analysis, here’s a quick summary:

Dollop #1: Cain is a fly-ball pitcher, and fly-ball pitchers give up lots of home runs. But Cain did not; his HR-allowed rate is abnormally low by his own standards. 

Dollop #2: Cain has gotten lucky hit-wise. Statheads call this BABIP — batting average on balls in play. League average is about .290. Cain has been below .250. When batters hit him, they aren’t falling in. But that has started to turn this month, hence the higher hit rates and the much higher ERA (4 starts, 22 IP, 29 hits allowed, 6.04 ERA).

Through it all, Cain continues to issue free passes like Muni on Spare the Air Day. High walk rates, climbing hit rates — if the home run rates start to catch up, Cain could hit a funky patch like the one we saw early last year.

As I said, Lincecum’s repertoire is similar to Cain’s: hard fastball, big hook, middling chage-up. But Lincecum — small sample size warning! — has much better control. Since his nerve-wracked debut with 5 walks, he’s only walked 1 batter per start. And despite having power-pitcher stuff, he keeps the ball on the ground far more than Cain. So far, 37 ground-ball outs to 22 fly-ball outs. Cain this year: 54 GB outs, 75 FB outs. No matter how bad a pitcher’s luck, groundballs tend to stay in the ballpark. You could look it up.

It’s very early days, but Lincecum is starting to show signs that he won’t need his best stuff or as many lucky breaks as Matt Cain to be a dominant pitcher.

***

P.M. UPDATE:

More Baseball Prospectus, this time a quote from Arizona manager Bob Melvin: "It’s just really tough to rely on a starting rotation made up entirely of young pitchers. You need to have an idea of what you’re going to get most nights. It makes it tough on everybody--the offense, the bullpen--if you are in a situation where your starting pitching is inconsistent and you’re falling behind early a lot of nights.”

Can anyone tell me what’s fundamentally wrong with Melvin’s thinking?



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[May 23, 2007 5:36 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Paul R. said

"Do you understand the meaning of the word 'foreboding'? As in my OPS is under .500 and I make $13 million this year."

[May 23, 2007 5:43 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Roger said

Cain's and the Giants' pitchers in general low HR rate on flyballs is, in fact, an industry-wide trend. The numbers of percentage of flyballs leaving the park this year are much much lower than the rest of the decade. And it's pretty steady across all weather regions, indoors, big park/small park. My theory: MLB has introduced whatever the opposite of the rabbit ball is, to make it look like the drug testing policy is working just swell. Humidors for everybody!

[May 23, 2007 6:39 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Doug Purdie said

Cain's low hit rate is not luck. His low hit rate of this season (6.44/9IP) looks amazingly like his low hit rate from last season (7.41/9IP) and the season before (4.66/9IP). Low hit rates are SOP for Cain.

[May 23, 2007 7:03 PM]  |  link  |  reply
BawLa said

The exploding, rising action on Cain's fastball is what makes for more fly-ball outs. Pretty simple. Cain can pitch above the hands and does.

I think it is unfair to compare the two because the league hasn't even adjusted to Timmy yet. But it is obvious that Tim has more control at this point.

[May 23, 2007 8:46 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ogc said

I think the best comparison of one versus the other is to compare their minor league stats. Lincecum dominated, it was ridiculous. Cain did well but not knock your eyes out. And there were the walks too.

Comments on DIPS theory. That's one problem I have with some sabers when applying DIPS - they don't acknowledge that there are those pitchers who are the bumblebees who don't fit the mold.

Let's take Cain. I looked at his BABIP and, small sampling admittedly, but his BABIP (this is different from H/9, ignoring plays that involves no fielders, i.e. BB, K, and HR, and core to DIPS theory) is usually seriously under the magical .300 that everyone regress to the mean to, when you look at his monthly stats. Given all the starts he has thrown in his career that are 1 and 2 hitters, I don't think it takes much to see that he's one of those who can keep it below .300 regularly, like Zito. Plus he has kept his BABIP under .300 for his career, except for his first season,when it was .301 (then .264, .280, .160 in SF, .272 last season).

On HR/9, what I found is that he benifits greatly from pitching in SF. His HR/9 in SF is 0.6 and on the road it is 1.0, which is about as high as one would want it to go.

SF depresses HR rate for most people not named Bonds, as Bill James stats show, last 3 years, lefties hit 27% less homers in SF than on road, righties 10% less. So if Cain were to go to another team, yeah, the fly balls would probably be a bigger problem, but in SF, he's fine.

Also, I would note that Cain is really only known for his fastball and curveball, but Lincecum is suppose to be good with his fastball, curveball AND changeup (what I heard from Krukow this morning). And as good as Cain's curve is, it seems to me that the accolades for Lincecum's curve appear to be better, partly because of the way he threw the ball overhand.

[May 24, 2007 12:18 PM]  |  link  |  reply
reeky said

I haven't got the stats, but the "game feel" for Cain and Lincecum is *way* different. Cain is "effectively wild", Lincecum is "clockwork". The ultimate "effectively wild" was Nolan Ryan...we can only hope!
Interesting about Cain being younger than Lincecum...Cain's "presence" sure belies his age.

[May 24, 2007 12:55 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ELM said

reeky -- you're right about the game feel, though I think "effectively wild" is just another way to say "not as good as he could be." First of all, lots of walks keep him from pitching deeper into games. How many times has Cain come out in the 6th or so b/c of his pitch count? And unless a team has a killer offense and/or a killer bullpen, the Giants are much better off with Cain going deeper into games.

Second, lots of walks and deep counts lead to high stress innings, which, unless Cain is a freak of noature, is bad news for his arm at such a young age.

[May 24, 2007 3:36 PM]  |  link  |  reply
reeky said

You inspired me to look at the Cain vs Ryan stats, and they are interesting...I'll put the links at the bottom cause they're ugly (is there a way to embed links?). I don't want to force the comparison -- it was a different time and place, like Ryan's 22-26 complete games during '73 to '77, and he wasn't the leader except in '77! But check out the huge number of walks/wild pitches going along with all those strikeouts. It's a particular style of pitching: scaring a hitter shitless. Cain could be a similar type, especially if he aquires a nasty attitude.

Ryan: http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ryanno01.shtml

Cain: http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cainma01.shtml

[May 28, 2007 2:46 AM]  |  link  |  reply
SharksRog said

For months now I have believed that Tim Lincecum was better than Matt Cain and indeed the Giants best pitcher.

While I agree that to some extent Matt is indeed a freak in that he can keep hit and home run rates down, he likely will see both go up over the rest of this season -- especially his home run rate.

The advantages Tim has over Matt is more dominant stuff, better control, the ability to throw more ground balls, and a much better curve ball.

The advantage Matt has is more experience despite his slightly younger age.

I have been predicting for about 10 months now that they will form the Giants best pitching duo since Marichal and Perry.

And to be honest, I think Tim will turn out to be even better than Juanito.