Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Ninety-Seven: Matt Cain, San Francisco Giants
Cain is able. He just can’t catch a break.
Each year, without fail, a handful of starting pitchers are unlucky. These are the guys who put together great seasons, only to see their teammates fail to score runs almost every time they’re on the mound. This season, pitchers such as Roy Oswalt of the Houston Astros, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners and Johan Santana of the New York Mets have suffered from dismal run support, and their low win totals reflect that.
Out in San Francisco, though, the Giants have a young starting pitcher who can beat anyone’s woeful tale of low run support. His name is Matt Cain, he’s 25 years old, and he throws a fastball that can blow a hole through a wall. In his five full seasons, Cain has developed quite nicely from a thrower into a pitcher. But Cain arrived in San Francisco at the tail end of the Barry Bonds years, and his Giants have not yet built a formidable offensive club in the post-Bonds era. Hence, Cain has received very little hitting support throughout his career. To put it in perspective, his career earned-run average of 3.47 is ninth among active pitchers. And yet, his career won-loss record is 52-59.
That’s right – he gives up three and a half runs per nine innings, and he loses more games than he wins. By comparison, Andy Pettitte owns a 3.87 career earned-run average – .40 points higher than Cain’s. And yet, in his first five seasons in the majors, Pettitte had a won-loss record of 81-46. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Pettitte was pitching for the Yankees during those years. Indeed, Pettitte has never had a losing record in his career, even going 14-11 with a 4.70 ERA in 1999. By comparison, Matt Cain went 7-16 with a 3.65 ERA in 2007 and 8-14 with a 3.76 ERA in ’08.
Despite a slightly improved offense this year, Cain is still not getting the run support he surely craves. His ERA is at 3.14, but his record stands at just 8-8. The Giants as a whole have such strong pitching this year that they’re in second place, just behind the Padres, in the National League West. As Saturday’s trade deadline nears, Matt Cain is surely hoping to see his team pick up a potent bat from another team. Should they do so, and should rookie catcher Buster Posey continue hitting the cover off the ball, the Giants might be able to give Matt Cain the one thing he undoubtedly craves more than his own victory total – a trip to the playoffs.
In the October spotlight, Cain would have the chance to introduce himself to the scores of fans who don’t know him from Adam. His own Giants fans and teammates know him quite well, though. And they’d like nothing more than to ride that golden right arm into the promised land.
Showing posts with label Buster Posey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buster Posey. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Babes & Busters (One Sixty-Two: Day 79)
Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Seventy-Nine: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants
This year, the National League has one of its most impressive rookie classes ever. From the outfield to the pitcher’s mound to the backstop, rookies are playing crucial roles on several big-league teams. America’s modern youth sports system expects young athletes to specialize in one sport early on, and to play that sport all year long. So when a 22-year-old arrives in the big leagues today, he’s a lot more experienced and ready to contribute than the typical rookie of previous generations. This year’s rookies are likely to play deciding roles in determining who wins the league’s pennant. Come November, it will be awfully tough to determine who this season’s NL Rookie of the Year should be.
Despite their enormous talent, there’s one problem with most of these talented National League rookies: Their first names are too dull. There’s Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Michael Stanton, Matt Latos, Mike Leake, Pedro Alvarez. Jaime Garcia, Ike Davis. All right, Ike isn’t a name you’d see every day, but the rest are just so ordinary. Where are the nicknames? Ever since the early days of pro baseball, nicknames have been such a colorful part of the game. Where are they now?
Until these youngsters find a more colorful moniker, my Rookie of the Year vote goes for the 23-year-old who catches for the San Francisco Giants and answers to the name of Buster. His given name is Gerald Posey, but this Georgia native is the one rookie who’s following that time-honored baseball tradition of grabbing hold of a cool nickname. Buster Posey: Once you hear the name, you can’t forget it.
Creative nicknames add to a ballplayer’s mythic lore, and offer the sportswriters more color to work with when describing the players’ exploits. Back in the old days, when sports fans learned about their athletes from newspaper articles rather than SportsCenter highlights, these nicknames helped paint a picture of the player in each reader’s mind.
Who needed a Lawrence Berra when you could call the Yankee catcher “Yogi”? And why call the outfielder plain ol’ Joe Jackson when “Shoeless Joe” sounded so much better? The great home-run hitter’s name was George Ruth, but how ‘bout just calling him “Babe”? And on it goes, from James “Cool Papa” Bell to Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown to Joseph “Ducky” Medwick. And that’s not even counting all the men named Lefty or Red or Whitey or Hack or Goose or Smokey.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Posey’s father, Demp, was called “Buster” as a kid. When he had his own son, Demp named his child Gerald Dempsey Posey III, but chose to call the kid by the same nickname he had known as a child. "It stuck with him," Demp Posey told the Mercury News. "It's just kind of him. He's just ol' Buster."
So let Stephen Strasburg strike out the world, and let Jason Heyward hit home runs to the moon. As for me, I’m voting for the rookie who’s hitting .333, driving in runs and leading the defense for San Francisco. He’s a gamer, and he’s a Buster. They named him just right.
Day Seventy-Nine: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants
This year, the National League has one of its most impressive rookie classes ever. From the outfield to the pitcher’s mound to the backstop, rookies are playing crucial roles on several big-league teams. America’s modern youth sports system expects young athletes to specialize in one sport early on, and to play that sport all year long. So when a 22-year-old arrives in the big leagues today, he’s a lot more experienced and ready to contribute than the typical rookie of previous generations. This year’s rookies are likely to play deciding roles in determining who wins the league’s pennant. Come November, it will be awfully tough to determine who this season’s NL Rookie of the Year should be.
Despite their enormous talent, there’s one problem with most of these talented National League rookies: Their first names are too dull. There’s Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Michael Stanton, Matt Latos, Mike Leake, Pedro Alvarez. Jaime Garcia, Ike Davis. All right, Ike isn’t a name you’d see every day, but the rest are just so ordinary. Where are the nicknames? Ever since the early days of pro baseball, nicknames have been such a colorful part of the game. Where are they now?
Until these youngsters find a more colorful moniker, my Rookie of the Year vote goes for the 23-year-old who catches for the San Francisco Giants and answers to the name of Buster. His given name is Gerald Posey, but this Georgia native is the one rookie who’s following that time-honored baseball tradition of grabbing hold of a cool nickname. Buster Posey: Once you hear the name, you can’t forget it.
Creative nicknames add to a ballplayer’s mythic lore, and offer the sportswriters more color to work with when describing the players’ exploits. Back in the old days, when sports fans learned about their athletes from newspaper articles rather than SportsCenter highlights, these nicknames helped paint a picture of the player in each reader’s mind.
Who needed a Lawrence Berra when you could call the Yankee catcher “Yogi”? And why call the outfielder plain ol’ Joe Jackson when “Shoeless Joe” sounded so much better? The great home-run hitter’s name was George Ruth, but how ‘bout just calling him “Babe”? And on it goes, from James “Cool Papa” Bell to Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown to Joseph “Ducky” Medwick. And that’s not even counting all the men named Lefty or Red or Whitey or Hack or Goose or Smokey.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Posey’s father, Demp, was called “Buster” as a kid. When he had his own son, Demp named his child Gerald Dempsey Posey III, but chose to call the kid by the same nickname he had known as a child. "It stuck with him," Demp Posey told the Mercury News. "It's just kind of him. He's just ol' Buster."
So let Stephen Strasburg strike out the world, and let Jason Heyward hit home runs to the moon. As for me, I’m voting for the rookie who’s hitting .333, driving in runs and leading the defense for San Francisco. He’s a gamer, and he’s a Buster. They named him just right.
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