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Giants push loyalty aside, make right choice to move Cain to bullpen

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This offseason, the San Francisco Giants signed closer Mark Melancon to a four-year, $62 million deal that was among the richest contracts ever signed by a Major League reliever.

When the Giants start the second half of the season on Friday in San Diego, Melancon won’t even be the highest-paid member of San Francisco’s bullpen.

On Wednesday morning, Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy announced on Murph and Mac on KNBR that 13th-year veteran and starter Matt Cain will move to the bullpen to make room in the team’s rotation for ace Madison Bumgarner, who is set to return from the disabled list this weekend.

“We’re probably going to use Matt Cain as a swingman, and use him in the bullpen,” Bochy said. “I’ve talked to Matty about his situation, so, we talked about a six-man rotation, I don’t think that’s going to work, that leaves us a man short in the bullpen.”

Cain is in the midst of the final year of a five-year, $112 million contract he signed following a 2012 campaign in which he led the Giants’ staff with a 16-5 record and a 2.79 earned run average. Cain was the Giants’ most reliable starter en route to the franchise’s second World Series title in three seasons, and after starting the All-Star Game for the National League in 2012, San Francisco rewarded the then-27-year-old with one of the richest contracts in franchise history.

At 33 years old, Cain will earn more than $20 million this season, and the Giants have a club option they could exercise in 2018 to bring Cain back for a cool $21 million. Needless to say, they won’t.

After anchoring the front end of the Giants’ rotation early in the decade, Cain’s fall from grace has been precipitous, and it might not be over yet.

In his role as the Giants’ fifth starter this season, Cain holds a 3-8 record with a 5.56 earned run average, which marks the second-highest ERA in the National League. If not for Cain’s teammate, Matt Moore, Cain’s ERA would put him in the N.L. cellar.

On Sunday, the longest-tenured Giants’ player made his first appearance out of the bullpen for Bochy’s ballclub this season, as he tossed 1/3 of an inning and allowed two walks. For the foreseeable future, San Francisco will presumably ask Cain to eat innings in blowout losses, which have been all too frequent for a Giants team scuffling into the All-Star break with the league’s second worst record, an abysmal clip of 34-56.

On Wednesday morning, Bochy remained upbeat, suggesting Cain will still hold a key role as a member of the Giants’ pitching staff. But for a team that sits 22 games under .500, can a pitcher who was forced out of the starting rotation and will spend the rest of the season as the team’s long man and spot starter really add value?

“With our five guys that we have now, somebody had to go, and we just feel like Matty (Cain) can be a swing guy if we have to give (Ty) Blach a couple starts off and give him a break, then Matt can go in there,” Bochy said. “Or (Matt) Moore, or any of these guys. You know, Matty’s such a great team player he’s all in on anything that can help this club get back on track.”

As the Giants play out the remainder of a hopeless season, the team’s management could have forced Bochy to give Cain a more dignified exit, and asked him to honor Cain’s remaining starts. Though Bochy denied its potential effectiveness, a six-man rotation could have been plausible for San Francisco, especially given Blach’s youth, Moore’s struggles, Cain’s veteran status and Bumgarner’s return from a serious injury. Extra rest offered potential benefits for more than half of the team’s rotation, but as Bochy said, because of bullpen constraints, it’s just not feasible.

If San Francisco elected to go short in the bullpen and long in the rotation, a handful of consecutive meltdowns would have catastrophic implications. Say Moore lasts four innings, Blach goes five and Cain goes four over a three-day stretch. Toss in an extra innings contest that stretches the bullpen, too. At some point, the Giants would be putting their relievers –many of whom are young and promising– under incredible stress in a lost season. The math for a six-man rotation just didn’t add up.

Nevertheless, Bochy could have chosen to remove Blach or Moore from the Giants’ rotation, preserving Cain’s spot. Moore looks further and further from finding himself with each passing start, as the southpaw has allowed at least five runs in four of his past seven outings. Blach, meanwhile, is still a 26-year-old rookie who has never thrown more than 185 innings in a year.

Still, both Blach and Moore could be key fixtures in San Francisco’s future, especially if either pitcher shows signs of progress during what will undoubtedly be one of the more anticlimactic second halves in franchise history. Regardless of how Cain performs, the Giants know he’s not a building block for the future, and Bochy knows Cain understands that, too.

“He’s (Cain) a competitor, he wants to be out there and the last thing he wants to do is get in a situation where you’re trying to match up with another team where you start one time and Blach starts the next time,” Bochy said. “He said that wouldn’t be fair to him, so he was good about it. He knows these things work out and he could be right back in that rotation.”

With the injuries the Giants have battled this season, there’s no doubt Cain could find himself toeing the rubber every five days in the near future. But for now, San Francisco has pushed its loyalty aside, and made the right decision to remove Cain from the rotation.

It’s not easy to find a Giants’ player who has served the franchise more admirably over the past quarter century. The three-time All-Star was a three-time World Series champion, has served as his club’s union rep, has been gracious with fans and media, and has committed over the long haul to the franchise with a practically unparalleled allegiance that’s rare in the baseball world.

While the Giants and Cain could see this coming –Bumgarner’s been on track to return to the rotation this weekend for more than a month– it couldn’t have made the decision any easier. However, for an organization that’s perhaps been too loyal over the past two to three seasons, the Giants’ conclusion to shift Cain to the bullpen is a realization that at some point, San Francisco must move on.

Though it won’t be easy for Cain or the Giants’ fan base to watch him toil in long relief efforts, San Francisco knows it’s time to focus on the future. For more than a decade, Cain was key fixture in that future, but after 13 seasons in the team’s rotation, that’s no longer the case.