Matt Cain has a reputation of being able to suppress home runs better than most pitchers. For the longest time the advanced stat community has been waiting for his home rate to move back toward league average, and it looks like this year it might actually be doing it.
The season is still young (he has thrown just 30 innings) but he has already given up 44 percent of the home runs he did last year in just 13 percent of the innings. In addition, he has given up multiple home runs in a game twice this season and that was something that he had not done since October 1st 2010.
Taking a look at his home runs per fly ball you can see that so far this year he is well above his career rate of 6.6 percent and is finally at around league average which is usually between 9.5 and 10.5 percent.
|
Year |
HR/FB |
|
2005 |
5.9 % |
|
2006 |
7.1 % |
|
2007 |
5.5 % |
|
2008 |
6.8 % |
|
2009 |
8.4 % |
|
2010 |
7.4 % |
|
2011 |
3.7 % |
|
2012 |
9.8 % |
This isn’t something that I am too worried about, and there is still plenty of time for him to get back to his home run suppressing ways. In fact, if Bruce Bochy didn’t send him out to pitch the seventh inning in search of getting Cain a win, his home run rate would likely still be below average.
Even with his home run rate at league average his other peripherals continue to improve. Cain’s been very good and he appears to be getting better.
Now all the Giants need to do is go out and score some damn runs for him.
