Cain’s Pitch Type Usage in Game 2
Matt Cain‘s seven-and-two-thirds inning, four-hit performance last night leaves him with 21.1 innings of playoff ball having allowed just a single run (and it was unearned). With all the other amazing playoff performances, Cain has flown a little bit under the radar. Part of Cain’s inconspicuousness might be because he hasn’t done it with overpowering stuff – just 13 strikeouts – but instead by inducing weak contact. This is a skill Cain has shown throughout his career, with a BABIP of 0.274.
I was mostly interested in last night’s game because, looking at the pitchf/x numbers, Cain was throwing a drastically different mix of pitches than he usually does. Cain is a four-pitch pitcher, and his fastball, slider, curve and change distinctly cluster in horizontal movement vs velocity space — making them easy to classify. Here are his pitches for 2010 and last night.
You can see how clearly Cain’s pitches cluster out, so there is little ambiguity in classifying them. Last night, compared to the season as a whole, Cain threw more changeups (26% versus 15%), more sliders (20% versus 10%), fewer fastballs (52% versus 62%) and many fewer curveballs (under 2% versus 13%).
I wanted to know whether the difference from his average pitch usage was anything out of the ordinary compared to other games (i.e., was it just standard fluctuation between games or a real shift). Here are the fractions of Cain’s non-fastballs over the course of the 2010 season for each game, with the same color-code: purple for curves, red for sliders, and yellow for changeups.
It looks like last night’s game was the continuation of a trend in decreasing curveball use, throwing the fewest curves of any game this season. On the other hand he threw the greatest fraction of changeups of any game this season, and there have been few games where he has thrown as high a fraction of sliders.
It is interesting that Cain would so drastically change his pitch usage during the World Series — and the playoffs in general, where we see the decrease in curves — but, obviously, the results have been good for him.
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Based on watching many of Cain’s games, most of his HR’s allowed have come on haning breaking balls rather than the fastball. Maybe he decided that the curve was more likely to hang than the slider? Just guessing.
I wonder how much of this is Cain, and how much of it is Buster, who is apparently very good at calling the right pitch.
Yes, we should look at his CERA and then maybe look at opening up the Cy Young Award to catchers.
You misunderstood. I was talking about the selection of pitch types.
Interestingly, the two curveballs he did throw spun in for first-pitch called strikes. Maybe they felt the Rangers were good at hitting curves, and they would only try to steal a strike or two with them?
The most common situation for Cain to throw that curve is on the first pitch when a player’s looking fastball and can’t get the bat of their shoulder in shock. I think he’s been afraid to throw that curve since he left one up to Adrian Gonzalez for a 3 run homer that cemented a loss in the final regular season series against the Padres. While the low number of curves is abnormal, the count is very normal.
Is Cain just being diplomatic when he lavishes praise on Buster after every successful start, or is Buster really that good at calling games? When an entire staff goes on an historic run, should we start to look at the common denominator among them all–the catcher?
I don’t know, but I know that Matt Cain is unbelievably consistent, underrated, and should get more attention than he does. 21+ innings of scoreless postseason ball is remarkable, even in AT&T Park.
AT&T park gets far more credit then it should IMO, it’s not like visiting teams arn’t pitching in the same park when they visit and the Giants home record is similar or worse to other playoff teams.
I think the catcher praise has more to do with the character of the pitcher than the abilities of the backstop.
Just my observation, no stats, but Buster has a distinctly different style of pitch calling and also of framing pitches than Molina. Brian Wilson, for one, has seemed to improve his results significantly since the change. When Molina called for a pitch on the outside corner from Wilson, he would set up clear outside the strike zone while Buster sets up right on the edge of the plate. Wilson’s walk rate went down noticeably. Buster is also much more eager to call for the high fastball or “climb the ladder” in strikeout situations than Bengie ever was.
Do you think they gameplanned to change the pitch selection because of Molina’s familiarity with Cain?
Well, for what it’s worth — Molina’s postgame comments made explicit mention of how good Cain’s curve was last night. I must admit I was very surprised to see PitchFX having him down for so few curveballs in his start — my recollection was that he threw several more (although this is obviously purely anecdotal). It is possible, though, that PitchFX may have missed a couple (considering how appalling the system is at identifying Lincecum’s pitches, I don’t believe it’s advisable to always take it at face value).
not that its possible, but ithink it would be fun to see a stat for number of “shake offs”/9innings… so we can see how often giants pitchers agreed with buster’s pitch selection as compared with say bengie’s…
or maybe Dave ( orsomeone else) can do an analysis of pitch-type frequencies for each of the giants starters with a split before and after the molina trade when buster became the full time catcher. It could be a pretty interesting discussion, and one way to possibly determine if posey did indeed influence the pitching staffs incredible success at the end of the season
Didn’t you listen to McCarver last night? Veteran catchers encourage their pitchers to shake off.
maybe Dave ( or someone else) can do an analysis of pitch-type frequencies for each of the giants starters with a split before and after the molina trade when buster became the full time catcher. It could be a pretty interesting discussion, and one way to possibly determine if posey did indeed influence the pitching staffs incredible success at the end of the season
Go to texasleaguers.com and you can DIY! They have inputs that make it easy to query for splits such as you’re looking for. Seriously, it’s simple and can tell you exactly the thing you’re asking for.
Yeah, but there’s no reason to do it twice ;-)
How bout: the change up is a feel pitch and Cain has gained a very good feel of that pitch. I’d say Buster called true to the game plan; soft away, hard inside, and Cain executed with very few mistakes to location.
That was a typical performance for Cain when he is on. Not too many strikeouts, low pitch counts, hitters not digging in their heels, and Cain a bulldog with RISP.
As far as credit goes, it is a calculus of staff ability & intelligence, Dave Righetti, Mark Gardner, Bruce Bochy, a little Bengie Molina and to top it off, Buster Posey who makes his pitchers feel more comfortable with a fleet footed runner on first.
Funny, as I remember scouts thinking that that curve would be his greatest weapon in the bigs, so many minor league seasons ago.
Really? I know they hyped his fastball, but I don’t remember as much ink spilled about the curve. Lincecum, on the other hand, was the guy with the “80″ curve at UW (which never really materialized in the bigs). I’m not disputing what you’re saying — I just don’t remember it. Interesting point.
I definitely remember the curveball hype. Mostly because I remember spending about 18 months waiting for the curve to actually show up.
I do think there’s been a change to more offspeed pitches — and especially more offspeed pitches in fasball counts — with Posey calling his games, and that it’s something that opposing teams have been slow to recognize. There were quotes from some of the Phillies hitters after game 3 of the NLCS that Cain surprised them by not throwing as many fastballs when they would normally expect them. Then yesterday the Rangers seemed caught off guard by exactly the same thing.
It will be interesting to see if they make any adjustments if the series gets to a game 6.
It seemed like over the last few months Cain gained a greater feel for his change up and in most of his later successful starts he had the change working as a swing and miss pitch. Maybe last nights was a continuation of that trend where he works it in more and more
Cain looks less and less impressive in his starts to me in terms of domination or strikeouts but the results are better…he seems like a finesse pitcher now which is a little disappointing to me because i’d like to see the 95 mph fastball every now and again for the strikeout but seems like its gone… :(
One game does not a pitcher make. His K rate has been right around the same area for the past 3 years. His velocity is now low 90′s, but funny enough he’s a better pitcher now than he was when he was a fireballer. Just more proof that velocity is one of the most over hyped attributes to a pitcher. His BB rate has been lowered in 3 straight seasons, and probably in part because he’s not throwing his fastball as hard as he can anymore, and can locate it extremely well. His fastball command in Game 2 was phenomenal.
I find it interesting that Cain’s pitches are so neatly grouped by pitch effects, because (curve aside) I have a harder distinguishing his pitches visually on television than any other pitcher.
Is cain still an average starter Bhaakon? Go ahead and pull out your source Rob neyer article to prove me wrong
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