What happened to Cain last year? He had one of the weirdest years in recent memory. He pitched really well in most of the games he pitched; 20 of his 30 starts were quality starts, which tied him for 30th among all starting pitchers. However, despite pitching well in the majority of his starts, it seemed as though he was more susceptible to the blowup start (outings where a pitcher gives up five or more earned runs). In 266 career starts Cain has 42 blowup starts, which is a little less than 16 percent of his starts. Last year he had five blowup starts, which was a little less than 17 percent of his starts so he didn’t have a vastly larger number of blowup starts. The table below provides the percent of blowup starts as well as his ERA for all of his blowup starts. The data suggests there are two trends. First, the percentage of blowup starts are increasing and last year his blowup starts were extremely brutal in terms of ERA. The cause for the increase of blowup starts could be due to (or a mix of) bad luck, decreased quality of his stuff or the elbow fragments in his right elbow that could have caused discomfort.
| Year | Blowup Start ERA | % of Blowup Starts |
| 2006 | 10.37 | 25% |
| 2007 | 14.43 | 13% |
| 2008 | 10.16 | 21% |
| 2009 | 8.87 | 12% |
| 2010 | 11.25 | 12% |
| 2011 | 7.8 | 15% |
| 2012 | 7.18 | 16% |
| 2013 | 13.69 | 17% |
It is also worth noting the first half and second half splits. The differences that jump out at me are the LOB and HR/FB, but it’s hard to pin all of his performance on those two stats alone; during the second half of the season he faced teams with an overall winning percentage of 48 percent, which also could have inflated his stats.
I wasn’t buying Cain in last year’s guide because I never like pitchers who continue to work up in the zone despite a velocity decline. Last year his velocity was the same as the past two seasons, but he still likes to throw the ball up in the zone; based on my calculations he threw it in that location 35 percent of the time, which is only four percentage points less than the 2008-09 seasons. I believe Cain got unlucky with the number of runs he allowed in his blowup starts and there should be some regression.
If you are looking for his statistical projections please go here and download my latest projections.
