Giants starting pitcher Matt Cain was brilliant Friday, slicing through the Pirates' offense with ease. He only needed to face 28 hitters to get all 27 outs in his fifth career complete game shutout.
In fact, Cain had a perfect game ... against the Pirates' position players.
[Giants-Pirates recap/box score]
The amazing thing about this outing, aside from how dominant Cain was, is that the only batter to reach base was James McDonald, who singled with two outs in the sixth. Yes, the opposing pitcher was the only man who could reach base against Cain Friday. And we're not talking about a Jason Marquis/Mike Hampton/Carlos Zambrano/Micah Owings pitcher with the stick. McDonald entered Friday a career .069 hitter. He was 5-for-55 last season.
This was the third career one-hitter for Cain and Giants beat reporter Andrew Baggerly notes that Cain has never thrown a no-hitter in life, even including Little League.
There's no shame in a ball finding a hole off anyone's bat, and that's what happened with McDonald's single to left field. But Cain was missing plenty of bats. He struck out 11.
So, yeah, this was quite the oddity. In probably the best outing of Matt Cain's career, only the opposing pitcher prevented him from making baseball history with a perfect game.
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