Best Buy Low Pitcher: Matt Cain
A large swath of the sabermetric community had been waiting a severe decline for Matt Cain. He was someone who annually outpitched his peripheral numbers and frustrated some with his success. After all, a guy can’t sustain a .260 BABIP over the course of multiple seasons, and he certainly can’t continue to compile below-average home run rates with such a penchant for allowing fly balls, even if we’re talking about the cavernous AT&T Park.
With a 4.00 ERA in 184.1 innings this season, it appeared the “good luck” had finally expired. His fantasy value experienced a massive decline, going from the 5th-ranked starting pitcher in ESPN leagues (and according to our own Zach Sanders) last year to the 64th-ranked starter in 2013. Even the folks who expected a dropoff probably didn’t expect anything so dramatic. Last winter, anyone who posited that Jose Quintana, Tony Cingrani and Luke Hochevar would be more valuable pitchers at the end of the season would’ve been laughed out of the room.
But here we are. Quintana (56), Cingrani (60) and Hochevar (53) provided more fantasy value than Matt Cain, who was on average drafted amongst the top-ten pitchers in the spring. That’s obviously a season-killer for owners, and it’s a given that his value heading into the 2014 season will be severely depressed.
Should that be a signal to buy low and expect a bounce-back season in 2014, or should his 2013 campaign be viewed as the inevitable dropoff that many have expected for the past half-decade?
Despite his results closely mirroring his peripheral numbers (4.00 ERA to 3.93 FIP), the 29-year-old hurler is an excellent buy-low candidate on draft day. I’m not sure I would advocate trading for him in a keeper league — it would obviously depend on the price, both in dollars and players — but it could be something to explore on that front. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, we need to establish that Cain is actually a pitcher who should experience increased success next year.
The common concern with Matt Cain has always been his unique ability to consistently compile below-average BABIP numbers. Coming into the season, his BABIP hadn’t strayed above .263 in any of the previous four seasons. Thus, a season with an unusual 4.00 ERA must mean that BABIP finally returned to earth, right? Not quite. He struggled to prevent runs, but it wasn’t a BABIP-fueled season. His .260 BABIP hovers around his career average — and lends further credence to the fact that BABIP isn’t fully a luck-driven component; the pitcher does have some control over the outcome of balls put in play.
Cain’s struggles were not due to BABIP. Instead, his home run rate ballooned to 1.12 HR/9, which may not seem otherworldly, but the right-hander has never posted a home run rate over 1.00 HR/9. That’s a serious deviation for him, and unsurprisingly, his overall numbers ballooned in parallel.
The real question then becomes whether that increased home run rate should be expected to continue. What changed?
It appears nothing really changed outside his HR/FB moving over 10.0% for the first time in his big-league career. Consider the following points:
(1) His ground-ball percentage is a tick above his career average, so it’s not as if Cain is suddenly allowing more fly balls.
(2) His fastball velocity has remained remarkably steady, sitting at exactly 91.2 mph for the third-consecutive season, so it doesn’t seem we’re looking at a potential injury issue or decreased stuff.
(3) His .226 batting average against and 1.16 WHIP illustrate that batters are still having significant problems getting on base.
(4) His swinging-strike rate dropped slightly to 8.6% — which is roughly league average — but it’s still higher than his 8.4% swinging-strike rate in 2010 when he owned a 3.14 ERA over 223.1 innings.
The only change appears to be his HR/FB ratio, and I’m very tempted to give Cain a pass for that increase for the reasons stated above. In addition, most of his home runs (16 of 23) were surrendered in the first half, when the right-hander posted a 5.06 ERA through 112 innings. So we’re talking a small sample size of three months, and he quietly dominated in the second half with a 2.36 ERA in 72.1 innings. That’s the Matt Cain fantasy owners have come to know over the past half-decade.
Due to the home-run binge in the first half, though, Cain will likely be wildly underrated coming into the 2014 season. On September 12, ESPN released their final positional rankings for 2013. Matt Cain ranked 41st — behind guys like Ricky Nolasco, Doug Fister and R.A. Dickey. If that’s a harbinger for rankings to come next spring, he should be on fantasy owners’ very-short list for buy-low pitchers. It appears he will enjoy a much more Cain-esque season than he did this year.
J.P. Breen is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. For analysis on the Brewers and fantasy baseball, you can follow him on Twitter (@JP_Breen).
1. Won a championship in a 20 team league where I drafted Matt Cain in the second round. So wasn’t a season killer for me.
2. I believe his increase in the HRs are due to two things: change in luck and being tired from a few years of long playoff runs. His command was not as good. So while velocity was fine, he was leaving the ball in the hot zones of hitters too often. I think another Fangraphs writer wrote about this earlier this year.
So I agree, excellent buy-low candidate with the rest.
In a mixed keeper league for which I am in “win-now” mode, I should keep David Ortiz (1b-eligible) ahead of Cain, right?
I watch at least 80% of Giants games on TV. Let me solve this little mystery for you in two words: Hanging Sliders!
Click on Matt Cain in the article and scroll down to his pitch percentages and look up his FB% and SL% trend. The more sliders he throws, the more he hangs and those are the pitches that are getting clobbered.
As the throws the pitch more often, he may get more comfortable with it and hang fewer of them?
Not sure I buy this. His slider was credited with being a big reason why he was so successful in 2012. Did he suddenly forget how to throw it?
And pitch f/x says it was still an above average pitch in 2013.
His curveball on the other hand was crushed last year relative to 2012.
How does Pitchfx tell the difference between a hanging slider, curveball or changeup?
I know what I see when I watch the games.
I wouldn’t agree Cain is a good buy-low candidate, if anything this year should be indicative of decline. Cain’s low BABIP is mostly due to the high numbers of flyballs he allows in play, and you would expect opposing hitters who don’t hit homers on such pitches to have a low BABIP on such balls. Meanwhile, when it comes to grounders and line drives, Cain has an above average BABIP, although it could be small sample size noise given the majority of pitchers in MLB aim for grounders, while Cain and a select few are flyball heavy and can pull it off.
What does this mean? If teams approach Cain differently, aiming more for the groundball and line drive, they’re going to score many more runs against him than normal. In the 2013 season, this was no more dramatic than two games against the Cardinals, where the Cardinals strung together a ton of consecutive hits against Cain but no homers. The temptation against Cain is to aim for the fences because flyballs are easier to hit out than low pitches, but it’s also easier to hit off of someone who pitches up in the zone.
So while Cain’s HR/FB% this year is luck influenced, it also isn’t. It’s also dependent on his LD% and GB%, and as you can see from his post-2010 numbers, both have elevated while his FB% and IFFB% have diminished. This corresponds with his lowered arm slot since 2010, which makes it easier for him to control pitches but levels out the plane of contact with the batter.
Here’s a bold prediction: in 2014, Cain will again post career-worst numbers with no change in peripherals from 2013.
Good article. Only change the title. “Cain is able”.
Someone needs to write an article about how Bronson Arroyo and his home-run-surrendering ways is able to maintain such low babips year after year while topping out at 88 mph.
Came across this now after watching him serve up 4 bombs to the Dodgers on sunday night.
I drafted him, probably too early (around the 25th starter) thinking he’d bounce back at least reasonably close to his norms based on the second half…seeing that performance has me concerned