He’s not the Japanese starting pitcher that fans were likely hoping for, but the Athletics signed Shintaro Fujinami to a one-year deal worth $3.25 million, just a couple days before the January 14 deadline to sign posted players. With most starting-caliber players already traded away for prospects, Fujinami becomes just the sixth Oakland player not on a league minimum or arbitration contract, joining a collection of names including fellow international signee Drew Rucinski.

Eleven years ago, when an 18-year old Fujinami was selected in the first round of the 2012 NPB draft by the Hanshin Tigers, many evaluators considered him better than Shohei Ohtani, also taken in that round. Fujinami was well-known as a prospect coming out of high school, where he led his team to victory in the summer Koshien tournament by throwing complete-game shutouts on consecutive days, then tossing another shutout to clinch a junior world championship less than two weeks later. He had an excellent rookie season with the Tigers, posting a 2.75 ERA over 24 starts, and continued this excellence from 2014 to ’16 with a 3.02 ERA and 16.2 WAR, placing in the top seven pitchers by WAR each year.

Then things started to come off the rails. Where Fujinami had succeeded in spite of his below-average command in his first four years, his strike-throwing issues became debilitating after that. In 2017, he walked a sixth of his batters faced; in ’18, his ERA climbed to 5.32 as the walk issues remained. He made just one start in 2019 and has played part of each season since in the minor leagues.

Since 2020, Fujinami has made 27 major league starts and 34 relief appearances, along with 21 farm team appearances (19 of them starts). While he still had a double-digit walk rate in 2020 and ’21, his 7.6% clip in ’22 was the best of his NPB career, as he basically matched the league-average rate of 7.7%. His performance in the strikeout and walk department notably improved after a stretch in the bullpen and in the minors, with excellent peripheral numbers in the last two months of the season. He finished the year with a 3.38 ERA in 66.2 innings, but due to the lowered NPB offensive environment, that resulted in just a 102 ERA- (92 FIP-). While he wasn’t throwing more pitches in the strike zone than before, he significantly cut down on the number of waste pitches thrown, as evidenced by a career-high chase rate. Read the rest of this entry »

After a promising end to their 2021 season, the Detroit Tigers made a few big splashes in free agency to support a wave of young prospects on the verge of making their big league debuts. Instead of continuing to build on that momentum, however, Detroit took a huge step backwards last year, losing 96 games while scoring the fewest runs in the majors. Their new additions, Javier Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez, combined for just 2.6 WAR, and their top position player prospects, Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, had rough introductions to the big leagues. This cyclone of disappointment led to the dismissal of long-time general manager Al Avila and a bevy of questions about the direction of the franchise.

There are plenty of problems new president of baseball operations Scott Harris needs to address on the roster and in the organization. The early-career struggles and future development of Torkelson and Greene loom the largest, however. As prospects, those two were seen as can’t-miss, heart-of-the-order bats who would form the core of the next great Tigers lineup. Instead, their disappointing rookie seasons were a significant contributor to that league-worst offense in 2022.

Torkelson and Greene are both under 24 years old and will have plenty of opportunities to develop into the kind of contributors that reflect their status as former top prospects. Still, it would behoove Detroit to give them every advantage to succeed in the big leagues, leaving no stone unturned. To that end, the Tigers announced on Wednesday that they would be making some adjustments to the dimensions of Comerica Park ahead of Opening Day:

We’re adjusting @ComericaPark’s outfield dimensions and lowering wall heights in key areas prior to Opening Day 2023.

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) January 11, 2023

Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Bichette burst onto the scene in 2021, proving to be every bit the star he looked like as a prospect. His bat was dynamic, and he hit for both power and average. His defense at shortstop was passable, which was all anyone could have hoped for. He was durable, too, ranking among the league leaders in both plate appearances and defensive innings. Yet despite all that, the most exciting aspect of his game wasn’t his bat, or his glove, or his resilience; I’d argue it was his baserunning.

According to BsR, the comprehensive baserunning metric we use here at FanGraphs, the young phenom was electric on the bases. He finished with the seventh-highest BsR in baseball, ahead of names like José Ramírez, Myles Straw, and Trea Turner. Meanwhile, he ranked just 37th among qualified players in wRAA and 72nd in OAA. In other words, his value on the bases was where Bichette stood out most from the rest of the league. The metrics from other sources support this point — Baseball Reference had Bichette tied for 11th in baserunning, while Baseball Prospectus had him at 16th. Only six other players ranked among the top 20 on all three sites: Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

The Phillies made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth in 2022 and got all the way to the World Series, but to get a second bite at the championship apple, the roster needed to be improved. Signing one of the absolute best free agents available in Trea Turner to a monster deal that basically keeps him in Philly for the rest of his career does just that. I liked the Didi Gregorius signings in the past, but he never got back to his pre-injury form, and Turner represents a ginormous improvement on Sir Didi.

The big complication for the team’s offense right now is the outfield, an existing issue made worse by Bryce Harper’s Tommy John surgery guaranteeing that he would not play a full season. Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos are not a particularly impressive defensive pair, to say the least, but I’ll give the Phillies a pass here, as there’s no way they expected those two to play so much in the outfield at the same time. I’m less excited about Brandon Marsh in center, but that depth chart projection is actually the best for the Phillies since Odúbel Herrera was a good player. And while I didn’t like giving up Logan O’Hoppe for Marsh, it’s a reasonable upgrade at the position compared to the team’s typical plan: Adam Haseley platooning with one lucky fan every game.

Depth is a concern here, and there’s a pretty big dropoff at most positions if something bad happens. The replacement candidates at DH don’t inspire much hope, and I think the Phillies should make an effort to get better options before Opening Day. I’d have taken a chance on Nelson Cruz, and given the defensive output of the outfielders, I would have been aggressive at trying to bring in Kevin Kiermaier. Every team will get worse going from starters to replacements — it’s not like the Dodgers keep a spare Mookie Betts just hanging around for emergencies — but in ZiPS’ eyes, the Phillies have one of the five biggest declines (of teams so far) in projected WAR from starters to secondary options.

Pitchers

ZiPS isn’t high on Taijuan Walker in Philadelphia, but as a fourth starter, he helps round out the rotation. The computer sees Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler both returning to All-Star levels of performance, with Ranger Suárez not far behind; this is a good postseason 1-2-3. Bailey Falter also projects in the vicinity of league average. Andrew Painter gets a solid projection for a pitcher with a short history of professional ball, but while Mick Abel has a lot of upside, ZiPS thinks his command means he’s not as close to fill-in duty as Painter is. There’s not a lot of algorithmic excitement for the rest of the pitchers available in the high minors, so a few injuries would probably result in the Phillies being active in the trade market.

ZiPS gives solid projections to José Alvarado and Seranthony Domínguez but sees the rest of the bullpen as a mixed bag. After those two and Connor Brogdon, it doesn’t project a single reliever to beat a league-average ERA, even Craig Kimbrel. ZiPS is not at all bullish on recent pickup Gregory Soto; his FIP numbers are alright, but his control numbers are rather dismal, especially for a pitcher who isn’t great at punching out batters and frequently gets hit hard. His raw stuff means he has upside, but he’s still a project to a degree, despite a good FIP. A very low home run rate has been his saving grace, something that is really hard for anyone to maintain long-term. I think the Phillies would be wise to pick up another depth piece or two in relief.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Nelson Cruz wants his ring. Since watching a World Series slip right over the webbing of his glove in 2011, he has played 11 more seasons, well past his 40th birthday, in pursuit of that ultimate goal. On Wednesday, the 42-year-old agreed to sign on for his 19th major league season with his eighth team, heading to San Diego to join a fun Padres team looking to find its way even deeper into the playoffs after reaching its first NLCS of the 21st century last year. The deal, worth $1 million over one year, pending a physical, reunites Cruz with former Rangers assistant general manager A.J. Preller as well as former teammates and Dominican countrymen Manny Machado and Juan Soto, who he’ll suit up with first as general manager-player for the Dominican World Baseball Classic team in March.

Cruz could easily have called it a career by this point. After establishing himself as a big league bat in Texas, he has enjoyed a prosperous second act as somewhat of a slugging journeyman, representing four different teams in the All-Star Game since his age-32 season. Of his 459 career home runs, 382 have come since his 30th birthday, trailing only Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Rafael Palmeiro, and Hank Aaron. Prior to last year, hadn’t posted a wOBA under .340 or wRC+ under 123 in nearly a decade.

And then came 2022, the type of year that would chase most veterans into retirement. In 124 games as the primary DH for the 55-win Nationals, Cruz’s prodigious power disappeared; his slugging percentage went from .497 to .337, his ISO dipped from .232 to .103, and his wRC+ fell from 123 to 85. Aside from a 22-game stretch in late May and early June during which he looked like prime (or 38-year-old) Cruz, hitting .418/.483/.633 in 90 plate appearances, he wasn’t able to offer much value at the plate. He battled inflammation in his left eye that was obscuring his vision, which he said had been a worsening problem for about a year and a half. He was ultimately shut down in mid-September, but instead of calling it quits, he had his eye surgically repaired and got back to work, most recently alongside 2022 AL batting champ Luis Arraez. Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Beeter was a promising pitching prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he was first featured here at FanGraphs midway through the 2021 season. He’s now a promising prospect in the Yankees’ system, having been acquired by New York early last August in exchange for Joey Gallo. A 24-year-old right-hander whom the Dodgers drafted 66th overall in 2020 out of Texas Tech University, Beeter is coming off of a season where he logged a not-so-impressive 4.56 ERA at a pair of Double-A stops, but also 129 strikeouts in 77 innings. Possessing a power arsenal, he’s a hurler with a high ceiling.

Command has been Beeter’s bugaboo. The Fort Worth native walked 5.4 batters per nine innings last year, and his career mark as a professional is 4.7. Much for that reason, our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen feels that Beeter profiles best out of the bullpen, where he would feature a fastball that “has big carry thanks to its backspinning axis.” Eric has likened the action of Beeter’s best pitch to the one thrown by Tampa Bay Rays reliever Nick Anderson.

Beeter believes that he can remain a starter, and the Yankees appear to want to give him that opportunity. They loosened the reins on his pitch count after trading for him, and not only was that welcome news for the young right-hander, but it also had a positive effect on his walk rate. After issuing 35 free passes in 51.2 innings with Double-A Tulsa, Beeter issued just 11 walks in 25.1 innings with Double-A Somerset.

Beeter discussed the deal that brought him to Yankees, and what it could mean for his future, at the end of the 2022 season.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the trade. How surprised were you?

Clayton Beeter: “Everyone knows it’s a possibility to get traded, but no one really sees that actually happening. That’s kind of the way it was for me. My pitching coach with the Dodgers had asked me the week before if the deadline was weighing on me, and I was like, ‘Not really, I don’t think I’m getting traded at all.’ Then, sure enough, I’m riding in the car to a road trip, and Twitter starts blowing up with my name on it. It happened.”

Laurila: Surprise aside, what was your reaction?

Beeter: “I was sad to leave, because I had some really good friends over there, but I’d also been feeling a little… I guess ‘stuck.’ I kind of needed a fresh start, and that’s exactly what happened. I was actually really excited to move teams.” Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past decade, some storied names have manned shortstop for the Dodgers: Hanley Ramirez, Corey Seager, Trea Turner, heck, even an aging Jimmy Rollins was captain of the infield in LA in 2015 (though that move was ill-conceived). And now, after two years of historic free agent shortstop classes that saw the departures of both Seager and Turner, the big-money Dodgers will be adding to that list… Miguel Rojas?

At first glance, this is surprising. But by some measures, it makes sense: The Dodgers spread their money around and are less top-heavy than their wealthy counterparts. Even as they head into 2023 with an estimated $41 million less on the books than in ’22, the Dodgers will still be doling out $20 million or more to three players (four if you include Trevor Bauer). However, compared to the five other members of the $200 million payroll club, this mark is either tied for the lowest or at least below average depending on if we count Bauer: The Yankees are handing $20 million to six players, the Padres and Phillies five, and the Mets four. While the Angels only have three such players in that category, all are taking home at least $30 million and no Dodger is. In fact, of the $200 million club, the Dodgers and Phillies are the only teams without a $30 million payout for 2023.

So, it stands to reason that of these teams, the Dodgers might be best equipped to reset their hefty consecutive-years luxury tax penalty this offseason. Yet here’s where the Rojas trade doesn’t make sense all over again: adding him seems to put the Dodgers over the first luxury tax threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Correa is a Minnesota Twin. There’s a contract, there was a press conference, he joked about his son growing up Minnesota Nice — after almost a month of bizarre uncertainty, Correa’s future is locked down. Which probably means you’ll start trusting this in your gut somewhere around mid-August.

Spare a thought for the Mets and Giants, both of which were thought to have signed Correa last month, before those deals fell through. Neither club deserves that much sympathy, because both reneged on $300 million-plus contract offers on the basis of troubling medical reports. The Twins seem convinced that Correa’s fibulas are not made of marzipan, after all. And don’t be a coastal snob, they have good doctors in Minnesota — the Mayo Clinic, and so on.

But while it was the Mets and Giants who left Correa at the altar, and not the other way around, both teams were ostensibly making plans to build a lineup around one of the best infielders in baseball. And while there was never any official announcement, the public was in a frenzy. Unlicensed swag was sold, tickets purchased, blogs posted on the premise that Correa would be a Met and/or a Giant.

Now, both clubs are bereft of their erstwhile top free agent signing. And both teams are left to contemplate Bolton’s First Interrogative: How am I supposed to live without you? Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Before Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum carved their niches in Giants history, there was Matt Cain. Nicknamed “The Horse” thanks to his size (6-foot-3, 230 pounds) and durability, he was “the original homegrown hero of the Giants’ golden era,” to quote the headline of one tribute, serving as the bridge between the latter-day Barry Bonds teams and the Buster Posey ones. He played a significant role for the first two of the Giants’ three championships under manager Bruce Bochy and was particularly stingy in the postseason, posting a 2.10 ERA in eight starts totaling 51 innings.

In a 13-year career (2005–17) spent entirely with the Giants, Cain made three All-Star teams and received down-ballot Cy Young support in three seasons. On June 13, 2012, he threw the 22nd perfect game in AL/NL history. Alas, that 2012 season, the first year of a six-year, $127.5-million extension (briefly the largest deal ever for a right-handed pitcher), was his last good one. After that, mileage and injuries took their toll; he missed all of the Giants’ 2014 postseason run, having undergone season-ending surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow.

Poor run support, particularly early in his career, camouflaged some of Cain’s strongest seasons and knocked his career won-loss record below .500, but beyond his impact upon the Giants, he carved a unique niche among statheads. As old friend Eno Sarris explained at The Athletic just before his final start in 2017, “Cain retires third all time in pop-ups since we started tracking the play, and recognizing that this was a skill of his was important to statistical models. It’s not a stretch at all to say that his ability to elicit pop-ups is why pop-ups are now counted in pitching WAR on FanGraphs.”

Matthew Thomas Cain was born on October 1, 1984 in Dothan, Alabama. His father Tom worked in sales and management for a window and door wholesaler, and his mother Dolores was a schoolteacher. Tom’s job bounced the family from South Carolina to Alabama to Tennessee; the family moved to a 50-acre plot of land 30 miles outside of Memphis when Matt was 10 years old.

By that point, Matt’s baseball career was rolling along. At five years old, playing T-ball, he pulled off two unassisted triple plays in a seven-game season. At 11 years old, he came under the tutelage of former major leaguer Mauro Gozzo, who owned horses nearby and had a farrier in common with Cain’s grandfather, Guy Miller, who had sent his three grandsons to Gozzo for evaluation. “You never tell how a kid that young will develop,” Gozzo told the Bay Area News Group’s Andrew Baggarly in 2005. “But I definitely saw a loose arm, and I sensed some serious desire. Those are the two things you look for.” Gozzo soon quit his job in waste management to teach pitching full-time and schooled Cain in the importance of mound presence and confidence.

At Houston High School in Germantown, Cain’s drive to succeed was ahead of his physical ability; he was throwing his fastball in the 88–92 mph range, where he was up to 92–95 — accompanying that with a plus power breaking ball and a changeup — by the time he reached the majors. He began receiving attention from college scouts as a junior, and the following year, professional scouts were regularly attending his starts. In March 2002, Giants scout Lee Elder saw Cain pitch in place of teammate Conor Lalor, who was scratched due to a sore arm. “Elder saw the ball jump out of Cain’s hand and knew the kid was first-round draft material,” Baggarly wrote. After a senior season in which he went 7–3 with a 1.02 ERA, he was chosen by the Giants with the 25th pick in the 2002 draft and signed for a $1.375 million bonus.

Cain was just 17 years old when he began his professional career with the Giants’ Arizona League affiliate and still a teenager when he pitched in the Futures Game and reached Double-A Norwich in mid-2004, where he posted a 3.35 ERA with 7.5 strikeouts per nine in 86 innings. That performance vaulted him from 91st to 13th on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list. After pitching to a 4.39 ERA with 10.9 strikeouts per nine at Triple-A Fresno in 2005, he got the call from the Giants, debuting with a five-inning, two run effort against the Rockies on August 29, 2005, pitching well but getting the loss because his teammates scored just one run. Twitter hadn’t been invented yet, but if it had, #Cained would have been trending.

The final batter of Cain’s debut was Todd Helton, literally the toughest out in the league that year via his NL-best .445 on-base percentage. Cain battled him for 14 pitches before retiring him on a warning track fly ball. “Here was this 20-year-old kid who kept throwing strikes against one of the most dangerous hitters in the game and refused to give in,” Baggarly told FanGraphs. “I think that’s when a lot of us knew he had what it took to be an impact performer for a long time.”

The 20-year-old Cain went 2–1 with a 2.33 ERA (but a 4.08 FIP) in 46.1 innings over seven starts, leaving his rookie eligibility intact for 2006. He made the team out of spring training, but things didn’t go well initially; through seven starts, he was 1–5 with a 7.04 ERA, earning him a trip to the bullpen. But after just one relief outing, he returned and threw a one-hit shutout against the A’s in Oakland on May 21, finishing the year 13–12 with a 4.08 ERA and 3.96 FIP in 31 starts and one relief appearance totaling 190.1 innings, good for 2.5 WAR and fifth place in the NL Rookie of the Year voting.

For the quiet Cain, the transition to the majors was jarring. “I was a 20-year-old kid who didn’t understand anything about city life, didn’t understand what it was like to be in a major city, in a huge media area,” he recounted to MLB.com’s Chris Haft in 2017. “I had a hard time at first… I’d always grown up around trees and grass and outdoors, and here I am. I kind of felt like I was trapped in a bunch of concrete.” Over time he adapted to San Francisco; he and his wife chose a different neighborhood to live in each season, helping them gain a greater appreciation of the city.

In the spring of 2007, Cain signed a four-year, $9 million extension, which he inaugurated by beginning a six-year streak of making at least 32 starts and throwing at least 200 innings, but he went just 7–16 despite a 3.65 ERA (123 ERA+). Between that season — Bonds’ final one — and the next (8–14, 3.76 ERA), the Giants’ decrepit offense, which ranked second to last in the league in scoring in both years, eked out just 3.2 runs per game on his behalf. By comparison, the team scored 4.6 runs per game for Lincecum in 2008, helping him to an 18–5 record to accompany a 2.62 ERA en route to his first of two Cy Youngs.

Cain did crack the NL’s top 10 in WAR in both of those seasons, with 4.6 in 2007 (seventh) and 4.5 in ’08 (ninth), then put together his best season to date in ’09, going 14–8 with a 2.89 ERA (good for seventh in the league as well as a career-best 147 ERA+) and 6.1 WAR (eighth) in 217.2 innings. He made the NL All-Star team for the first time, though he didn’t pitch in the game after being hit on the elbow by a line drive in his final turn before the break. Led by him and Lincecum, the Giants snapped a four-year streak of losing seasons, improving from 72 wins to 88 on the strength of their run prevention. In the spring of 2010, Cain and the Giants hashed out another extension; this one, which incorporated the $4.25 million salary for the final year of his previous deal, albeit with different bells and whistles, totaled three years and $27.5 million.

Bolstered by rookies Posey and Bumgarner (both of whom had cups of coffee the year before), the Giants improved to 92–70 in 2010, winning their first NL West title in seven years. Cain put together another very good season (3.14 ERA, 223.1 IP, 4.1 WAR) camouflaged by a 13–11 record, but he was stellar in the postseason. In Game 2 of the Division Series against the Braves, he threw 6.2 innings and allowed just one unearned run, departing with a 4–1 lead; a bullpen implosion cost the Giants the game, but they took the series in five. In Game 3 of the NLCS against the Phillies, he threw seven shutout innings and allowed just two hits, and this time the bullpen held. In Game 2 of the World Series against the Rangers, he went even further, with 7.2 shutout innings on just four hits. He thus became the fifth pitcher ever to throw at least 20 postseason innings without allowing an earned run, after the Giants’ Christy Mathewson (27 innings in 1905), the Yankees’ Waite Hoyt (27 innings in 1921), the Giants’ Carl Hubbell (20 innings in 1933), and the Tigers’ Kenny Rogers (23 innings in 2006); Hubbell yielded three unearned runs, Hoyt two.

The Giants beat the Rangers in a five-game World Series but slipped back to 86 wins and second place in 2011. Once again, meager offensive support (3.4 runs per game) led to a mediocre record (12–11) for Cain, but he pitched to a 2.88 ERA (eighth in the league) in 221.2 innings. He also made his second All-Star team but again didn’t pitch in the game itself.

Just before the 2012 season began, Cain agreed to another extension that rolled over the final year of his existing deal. At that point, his six-year, $127.5 million pact was surpassed only by those of lefties CC Sabathia (seven years, $161 million) and Johan Santana (six years, $137.5 million). It was a record for a righthander, supplanting Kevin Brown’s seven-year, $105 million deal, but that would stand only until the following winter, when Zack Greinke signed a six-year, $147 million contract with the Dodgers.

For only the second time in his career, Cain got robust run support in 2012, a comparatively gaudy 4.7 runs per game. Combined with a 2.79 ERA (126 ERA+) and a career-high 193 strikeouts in 219.1 innings, he went 16–5. And after having taken five no-hitters into the seventh inning and one perfect game into the sixth, he finally went the distance for one on June 13 at AT&T Park, when he retired all 27 Astros he faced, striking out 14 over the course of 125 pitches.

It was the majors’ second perfect game of the season and the fifth in a four-season span after those of Mark Buehrle (July 23, 2009), Dallas Braden (May 9, 2010), Roy Halladay (May 29, 2010), and Philip Humber (April 21, 2012); only one has been thrown since, that by Félix Hernández on August 15, 2012. Cain’s Game Score of 101 matched that of Sandy Koufax (1965) for the highest in a perfect game, and at the time, the only nine-inning start of any stripe with a higher score was Kerry Wood‘s 20-strikeout, one-hit gem from 1998 (105). Since then, only Max Scherzer‘s 17-strikeout no-hitter of the Mets from 2015 (104) and Clayton Kershaw’s 15-strikeout no-hitter of the Rockies from ’14 (102) — both blemished by a batter reaching on an error — have surpassed Cain’s score.

(In a cruel coincidence, this scribe missed Cain’s perfecto by one day at AT&T, having watched Bumgarner homer and strike out 12 the night before in the company of a handful of baseball writers. That group included FanGraphs contributor Wendy Thurm, who wrote up her own experience of watching Cain here.)

The perfect game probably helped Cain get the starting nod for the NL in the All-Star Game. Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, who was 12–1 with a 2.40 ERA to Cain’s 9–3 with a 2.62 ERA, lobbied for the start by offering a hypothetical scenario of entering the game with men on base. But NL manager Tony La Russa chose Cain, who allowed one hit in two innings and was credited with the victory in an 8–0 win; Dickey threw a scoreless sixth.

In the postseason, Cain made five starts, pitching to a 3.60 ERA in 30 innings. Merely solid in Games 1 and 5 of the Division Series against the Reds, he yielded three runs in 5.2 innings in the finale but put the clamps on the Cardinals in the NLCS. After allowing three runs in 6.2 innings in a Game 3 loss, he returned to hold St. Louis scoreless for 5.2 innings in Game 7. He then went seven innings and allowed three runs in Game 4 of the World Series, departing in a tie game that the Giants won in the 10th, completing a sweep for their second championship in three years.

Unfortunately, it was mostly downhill from there for Cain. After a six-year stretch over which he ranked seventh in innings (1,299.2), ninth in WAR (26.2), and 10th in ERA (3.18, and 12th with a 126 ERA+) without missing a single start, he landed on the injured list for the first time in August with a forearm contusion suffered via a line drive. He still reached 30 starts for the eighth straight season, but his ERA ballooned to 4.00 (86 ERA+) and his WAR dipped to 0.8. He made just 15 starts in 2014 due to a cut on his finger, a hamstring strain, and surgery to remove bone chips that had been floating in his elbow for at least 10 years. “They’ve always been there,” he said of the bone chips. “It’s just that now they’re mad and they’re letting me know about it. For some reason, they got in a different spot and they got aggravated.”

The surgery turned Cain into a bystander during the Giants’ 2014 championship run but didn’t end his arm troubles. In the spring of 2015, he suffered a flexor tendon strain; between that and a subsequent bout of elbow inflammation, he made just 11 starts and posted a 5.79 ERA. A cyst removal, a recurrent hamstring strain, and lower back woes held him to 17 starts and a 5.64 ERA in 2016, and while he was healthy enough to make 23 starts the following year, he went 3–11 with a 5.43 ERA and was sent to the bullpen late in the season. After being idle for all of September, he made a farewell start on September 30, the season’s penultimate day. For five innings, he was the Cain of old, holding the Padres to two hits and one walk and striking out four, but he departed with a 1–0 lead that the bullpen couldn’t hold. #Cained one final time.

On that note, via Baseball-Reference: Cain ranks 57th in the Wild Card Era in games started (331), but he’s 31st in no-decision starts. Picking up on an area that Eno explored, he’s sixth in that period in quality starts (six or more innings, three or fewer earned runs) in which he received a no-decision (74) and 12th in quality starts in which he didn’t receive a win (112).

As Eno noted, Cain emerged at a time when statheads were gaining an appreciation of the distinction between defense-independent pitching outcomes (via Voros McCracken’s revolutionary DIPS) and the comparatively minimal amount of control a pitcher has over balls in play, with hurlers’ BABIPs often fluctuating wildly from year to year but eventually regressing toward league average in larger samples. Yet until 2015, Cain never posted a BABIP of .300 or higher, and six times, he qualified for the ERA title with a BABIP of .270 or lower, the most of any pitcher in the Wild Card Era; Scherzer and Ted Lilly are tied for second with five, and Justin Verlander, Ervin Santana, Tim Wakefield, and Barry Zito are tied for fourth with four. Among pitchers with at least 2,000 innings in the Wild Card era, only Kershaw has a lower BABIP:

Coincidentally enough, Arroyo, Dickey, and Weaver are all on this Hall of Fame ballot for the first time as well, and part of the One-and-Done subset just as Cain is. A key factor for these pitchers posting low BABIPs, and thus lower ERAs than FIPs — which 15 of the 16 of the pitchers above did over that time period, Martinez being the exception — is their skill at generating pop-ups. A gander at the Wild Card Era leaderboard shows only Weaver (13%) and Zito ahead of Verlander, Cain, and Arroyo (all 12.2%), with Kershaw (11.8%) just below. Pitching in home parks with large foul territories certainly factors into that; Zito, Cain, and Verlander were helped to their high rankings by the likes of the Oakland Coliseum, AT&T Park, and Comerica Park. Similarly, Cain has the lowest rate of home runs per fly ball (8.3%) of the era, with Cliff Lee (8.8%), Weaver and Verlander (both 8.9%) and Zito (9%) making up the top five, and Kershaw (9.4%) eighth.

How did Cain do it? Here’s Eno:

Talking to Joey Votto about his legendary ability to avoid pop-ups, he once admitted to me that the pop-up was the result of a pitch in the “perfect sliver of the strike zone, up and in-ish,” and that Cain was great at hitting that spot. During his peak seasons, Cain had a riding fastball that had a full inch more ride than the average fastball, meaning it dropped less than your average fastballs and jumped on hitters. Ride is associated with pop-ups, especially when you throw the pitch up and in, like Cain did.

We haven’t even talked about the step from BABIP suppression to quality of contact measures such as exit velocity and xwOBA, and unfortunately, only the not-so-pretty tail end of Cain’s career caught the Statcast era. But suffice it to say that these are topics of frequent discussion within sabermetrics, and within most such discussions, Cain’s name routinely… pops up. Alongside the great impact he had on a very successful era of Giants baseball, he’s left an outsized mark on our understanding of the game. That’s quite a legacy.