Matt Cain

Every great Giants team needs one guy you never have to worry about. For most of a decade that was Matt Cain. Lincecum got the hair and the Cy Youngs, Bumgarner got the October legend, and Cain just took the ball every fifth day, threw 200 innings, and lost a ridiculous number of games he deserved to win without ever once complaining about it in public.

He was born October 1, 1984, in Dothan, Alabama, and grew up mostly in Germantown, Tennessee, where he pitched for Houston High School. As a senior he struck out 83 hitters in 62 innings with a 1.03 ERA. He'd signed to pitch at Memphis, but the Giants took him 25th overall in the 2002 draft and he never went to college. He climbed through Hagerstown, San Jose, Norwich and Fresno, and by 2005 he was one of the top prospects in all of baseball.

The Giants called him up in late August 2005. He was 20 years old. On August 29 at what was then SBC Park he made his debut against the Rockies, Mike Matheny behind the plate, and lost. Six days later he won his first game in Arizona, and in his third start he threw a two hit complete game against the Cubs. Seven starts, a 2.33 ERA, and hitters batted .151 off him. We were hooked.

Then came the lean years, and man, were they lean. Cain was a rookie in 2006 and went 13 and 12, threw a one hit shutout across the bridge in Oakland that May, and tied for fifth in the Rookie of the Year vote. In 2007 he had a 3.65 ERA and went 7 and 16 because the Giants scored two runs or fewer in 21 of his starts. In 2008 he got the least run support of any starter in the league and went 8 and 14. I remember checking box scores those years like I was checking on a friend who kept getting dumped.

He finally got some luck in 2009. He went 14 and 8 with a 2.89 ERA, made his first All Star team, and won the Willie Mac Award, which goes to the most inspirational Giant every year. He couldn't even pitch in the All Star Game because a line drive caught him on the arm in his last start before the break. That was kind of his whole career in one sentence.

2010 is when the rest of the country found out what we already knew. Cain went 13 and 11 with a 3.14 ERA in the regular season, and then he threw three postseason starts and didn't allow an earned run in any of them: six and two thirds against Atlanta, seven shutout innings against the Phillies in the NLCS, and seven and two thirds in Game 2 of the World Series against Texas. Twenty one and a third innings, zero earned runs. San Francisco got its first World Series title, and he was a huge reason why.

In April 2012 the Giants gave him a contract extension that was, at the time, the richest ever handed to a right handed pitcher. He went out and earned every cent of it that summer. He threw a one hitter in the home opener against the Pirates. He threw nine scoreless innings against Cliff Lee in Philly. And on June 13, 2012, against the Astros, he threw the first perfect game in the history of the franchise, 14 strikeouts, 125 pitches, with Melky Cabrera and Gregor Blanco making catches that still make my stomach drop.

A month later Tony La Russa picked him to start the All Star Game in Kansas City, and he won it. He finished the year 16 and 5 with a 2.79 ERA and came in sixth in the Cy Young vote. Then in October he started every series clinching game the Giants won, at Cincinnati in Game 5 of the Division Series, at home in Game 7 of the NLCS, and in Detroit in Game 4 of the World Series. Not every start was clean. He lost Game 1 to the Reds and Game 3 in St. Louis. But when there was a series on the line, he was the guy Bochy gave the ball to, and the Giants won every one of those games.

From 2007 through 2012 he threw at least 200 innings every single season, which is where the nickname The Horse comes from. And then the body started sending the bill. A line drive hit his pitching arm in August 2013 and he finished that year at 8 and 10 with a 4.00 ERA. In 2014 he had surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow, chips he said he'd pitched through for about ten years, and he watched that third championship from the sidelines.

The last few years were hard to watch. Forearm, elbow, hamstring, back, all of it. His ERA sat above five in 2015, 2016 and 2017. There were still moments, though. On July 31, 2016, he threw five no hit innings against the Nationals at home and picked up his 100th career win. In 2017 he moved past 2,000 career innings, making him just the third pitcher in the San Francisco era to get there, after Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry.

On September 27, 2017, he announced he'd retire at the end of the season. He said he couldn't picture himself in a different uniform, and he never wore one. Three days later he took the ball one more time at home against the Padres and threw five shutout innings. Thirteen seasons, 104 wins, 1,694 strikeouts, 331 starts, every one of them for San Francisco. Only Marichal made more starts for the Giants in the San Francisco era.

He went home to Chelsea and their two daughters and to a lot of golf. The Giants put him on the Wall of Fame outside the ballpark on July 28, 2018, alongside Ryan Vogelsong and Brian Wilson. Every June 13 is still Matt Cain Day in San Francisco, by proclamation of the late Mayor Ed Lee, and every one of us who was at the park or on the couch that night still knows exactly where we were when Arias made that throw.

Look at the regular season record and you'll see 104 and 118 and think he was a .500 guy. He wasn't. He pitched for some brutal offenses in his early years, and the record is mostly a receipt for that. The number that matters is the one from October: eight postseason starts, 4 and 2, a 2.10 ERA.

In 2010 he gave up zero earned runs in three starts. Three! Against the Braves, against a Phillies lineup that had been to two straight World Series, and against a Rangers team that had just bullied the Yankees. Nobody talks about that run enough because Lincecum and Wilson and Renteria got the headlines, and honestly I think Cain liked it that way.

Then 2012. Down two games to none to the Reds, down three games to one to the Cardinals, and the Giants kept giving the ball to Cain when there was a series to close. Game 5 in Cincinnati, a win. Game 7 against St. Louis with the rain coming down, five and two thirds shutout innings and an RBI single for good measure. Game 4 in Detroit to finish the sweep. He wasn't perfect in all of them. He didn't have to be. He just had to keep us in it, and he always did.

And the perfect game wasn't some soft night either. He struck out 14, tied Sandy Koufax for the most ever in a perfect game, and needed two of the best catches I've ever seen to get there. When Blanco came up with that ball in right center to start the seventh, Cain said he had to recheck himself just to read Posey's signs. He did. Nine more outs, no drama after that. That's who he was.