Phillies visit San Francisco for a season-defining long weekend

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Oracle Park will host the Phillies and Giants this weekend

The Philadelphia Phillies (59-55) will continue their roller-coaster ride of a 2019 regular season out west with a long weekend visit to face the host San Francisco Giants (56-59) at Oracle Park.

The Giants, who stormed back into the National League Wildcard playoff picture with a scorching hot July, have stumbled backwards in August. Since flipping the page over on the calendar, San Francisco has gone just 1-6.

Wins in just four of their last 13 contests, including dropped two of three to the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, have dropped the Giants 3.5 out in that Wildcard race with four teams now standing between them and a spot in the postseason.

For the Phillies, losses in three of their last four games leave them tied for one of the two NL Wildcard berths. However, there are now five teams within 1.5 games of one another in what looks like it is shaping up to be a wild sprint (stumble?) down the stretch.

The biggest problem for both of these teams of late has been an inability to score runs. The Giants enter the series having put just 17 runs up on the scoreboard across their seven August games. That is an average of just 2.43 runs per game. Meanwhile, the Phillies have crossed the plate just 23 times over their own last half-dozen, or an average of 3.83 runs per contest.

The Giants have averaged just 4.24 runs per game over the entire 2019 season, the second-lowest per-game output in the National League. They also have registered the league’s second-lowest OPS, and have the second-lowest home run total in the NL, ahead of only the rebuilding Miami Marlins in each of those categories.

Things aren’t much better statistically on the mound for San Francisco. The pitching staff ranks just 10th of the 15 NL ball clubs in batting average against (.254) and OPS against (.754) as well as strikeouts. The Giants came in at 18th of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball in our latest MLB Power Rankings released one week ago, with the Phillies ranking in the No. 14 position.

With so many teams between them and a postseason berth, this is now a pivotal series for the host Giants. If the Phillies manage to somehow take three of four here, that would probably sound the death knell for the 2019 season by the bay.

For their part, the Phillies need to come out of this with at least a split. That would allow the club to return home next week having gone no worse than 3-4 in a two-city western swing.

Matt Cain Approaching Final Season With Giants

From losing campaigns to multiple World Series championships glory, Matt Cain has been a part of it all with the San Francisco Giants over the last dozen seasons.

The Giants first round pick back in the 2002 MLB Amateur Draft at 25th overall out of a Tennessee high school, Cain worked his way incrementally through the San Francisco minor league system during the first half of the last decade.

After winning 23 games combined in the 2004-05 seasons while rising from High A to the AAA level, Cain was given his first taste of the big leagues at the end of August 2005.

Cain Begins His Big League Career

Inserted into the rotation immediately upon his August 29 debut, Cain would produce six consecutive Quality Starts in September to end that 2005 season.

He would remain in that rotation for the better part of the next decade, helping the Giants go from also-ran to perennial contenders.

For more than seven years, from that late ’05 debut through the 2012 season, Cain made every one of his starting assignments. He went 85-78 over that time with a 3.27 ERA and 1.173 WHIP, allowing just 1,279 hits in 1,536.2 innings over 236 appearances (235 starts) with 1,278 strikeouts.

Cain finished fifth in the 2006 NL Rookie of the Year Award vote. He became an NL All-Star in three of the four seasons between 2009-12, receiving Cy Young Award consideration in each of the final three years of that stretch.