When It’s Time For a Change

Buster Olney has a great post where he simply posts a bunch of different opinions of unnamed insiders on Matt Cain.

The general consensus is that Cain is great, needs to not try and strike everyone out and that the losing in San Francisco may soon rot out his soul from the inside out.

It’s common knowledge the Giants will not have an offense able to compete for quite a while. So even though Cain is locked up for a while he may not have a chance to pitch on a lot of contending teams.

My thoughts have focused on how can the Giants maximize the years they do have Cain and Lincecum under control and compete the most. But what surprised me is how many of those Olney quoted were concerned about how the losing would affect Cain mentally.

I think part of this boils down to the old ‘You nerds need to get out of the basement’ argument. My worry was that the Giants would waste Cain’s performance on losing teams, not that the losing would somehow affect Cain himself.

Considering that one of the knocks on Cain is that he tries too hard to strike everyone out, maybe he is trying to win the game on his own. If losing is forcing Cain to change his strategy as a pitcher then maybe it’s a valid argument.

But I can only hope the Giants coaches can find ways to keep Cain’s head on straight while he and the team grow up together. While Cain is great most of Olney’s commenters point out he could grow into a No. 1 starter. There is still room for him to progress.

Hopefully I’m just making something out of nothing. Cain is a professional and while losing is frustrating on a competitive level it shouldn’t stop him from developing into the pitcher we all hope he can be.

But it will be interesting to watch is how he handles a second-consecutive year of poor offense.