Only time beleaguered Zito wins now is on payday

It usually stinks to discover that a stereotype is true, especially when it's a stereotype of you.

Thus, Barry Zito is having the worst kind of year as the highest-paid pitcher, with the worst paycheck-to-wins-ratio -- Infinity Point Damn.

Zito became the third pitcher of the past 50 years to go 0-6 in April. His ERA is an absurd 7.53. His WHIP is nearly 2. Every number he has, including his salary, is bloated beyond recognition.

Barry Zito is 11-19 with a 4.91 ERA in 39 starts for the Giants. (AP)

And that salary crack is what defines him now. It has defined him since he agreed to the Giants' lucrative request to make him the post-Bonds face of the franchise, in the way it once defined Kevin Brown, and just as Mike Hampton is defined by the number of starts he has missed since signing his own ginormous deal.

This is not new. But the 0-6 thing puts him in a special place because he is well on track toward absorbing the other big number of the age -- the 20-game loser.

You see, Zito is trapped, and not just by his salary. He is on a team that has two reliable pitchers at present, Tim Lincecum and Jonathan Sanchez. Matt Cain, who would have held Sanchez's place, has started fitfully, is 0-2, 5.63. While it is only April, it is still one-sixth of the season, and while the numbers don't tell the whole story, it tells a pretty wretched chapter.

The putative fourth starter, Noah Lowry, has been hurt all year. The fifth starter, Kevin Correia, hurt his arm Saturday. And general manager Brian Sabean, who has thought out loud about going to a six-man rotation once everyone is healthy, cannot now.

And even when he can, Zito is still going to be a part of it, because long relievers don't make $14.5 million this year.

Now the Giants could just concoct some injury and disable him for some portion of the season, just to see if he can somehow hit the same spots in games that everyone agrees he is hitting in the bullpen. He is on the verge of Jamie Moyer-dom, only he hasn't Moyer's control yet. Sunday against Cincinnati, he was again up and slow with everything, and got lit for eight runs in three innings.

But that's still the same problem of paying someone not to throw important innings, and while at some point sensible organizations say "Hang the money, we need some outs," sometimes the money stacks too tall to make hanging an option.

Even Pittsburgh, which has been run with profound lack of success for years now for any number of reasons, finally cut Matt Morris and his $9 million contract loose Sunday. Now $9 million isn't $14 million, but it's still a bunch of millions, we can all agree, so conceivably the Giants could cut Zito.

But as we know, it isn't this $14 million, but the $102 million after that that marries Zito and his furious struggles to the Giants for the season ahead. As a starter, where his tradition of better second halves seems to be the only thing that could save him from the ignominy that touched another of those 0-6ers, Mike Maroth. He is the last pitcher to lose 20 games, thereby robbing old Oakland pitcher Brian Kingman of his only claim to fame.

And while 20 is still just a number, it's also one more knee in the nethers in a year full of them, and one more brick in the wall that continues to define Zito now and forever as one who earned too much at the wrong time.

As silly as that seems to those of us who earn too little all the time.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.