He’s good.

Published by on May 28, 2008 | 3 Responses

After recovering from Memorial Day weekend — and eating way too much — I finally got back to watching some Giants baseball last night, when the Giants took on the division leading Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks have been great this season, winning with a mixture of rising young talent and experienced starting pitching in Brandon Webb and Dan Haren. The Giants countered with a rag tag group of scrapsters and pretty danged good young pitcher in Tim Lincecum.

Let me go on a quick Tim Lincecum tangent.

~ Lincecum is throwing the 4th fastest fastball in all of major league baseball among starters. On average his fastball is clocked at 94.2mph. Only Dustin McGowan, Josh Becket, and King Felix throw harder.

~ Lincecum has flip flopped his curve and changeup this year. Last year, other than his fastball, he threw his curve the second most at 19.7% and his changeup at 13.4%, but, this year he’s throwing the changeup 17.9% of the time and his curve 13.6% of the time. I’ve said it a bunch, but it’s amazing how fast he turned an ‘average’ pitch in his changeup into a definite weapon.

~ Lincecum’s K% — and remember, 16% is league average — is at 26.11%. Only Chad Billingsley (26.2%) and Edison Voquez (29.5%) have better K% rates. In 2007 when Jake Peavy won the Cy Young Award, he had a K% of 26.7%. It’s not the perfect comparison because Peavy’s control exceeds Lincecums right now, but it’s an interesting idea to think about. Lincecum’s next big step forward as a pitcher will be to improve his control, which he has gradually done this year when comparing to last year. He’s shaved almost 1% off his BB% in ’07 to ’08 and he’s moving closer to a league average BB% rate. That’s good news.

~ Lincecum is the league leader in FIP at 2.70 and in 6th place when going by xFIP with 3.47. xFIP is a little more skeptical of Lincecum because of his fly ball rate and the fact that he’s posting a very low HR/F rate right now at 5.2%. There’s a chance that his HR/F rate could move up a little towards the league average of 10-12% but a 3.47 ERA from your 24 year old starter is still nothing to sneeze at.

So, we know that Lincecum is doing a lot of stuff well right now. He’s slightly reduced his walks and is striking out slightly more hitters than last year.

In last nights win, he went 7.1 innings while giving up 7 hits, striking out 7, walking 3, and giving up 3ER — the most earned runs he has given up in a start this year. A couple of those runs came when Tyler Walker came in and immediately gave up a double and threw a wild pitch.

I still really don’t like the way Bochy is handling this staff at times. He put Lincecum back out in the 8th last night after he obviously starting to fatigue — hello arm injuries — and gave up two singles to start the inning. He finished the night at 119 pitches and I really wish Bochy would take his foot off the gas petal with both Lincecum and Cain. It’s only May, what’s the point?

Out of 10 Lincecum starts this year he’s thrown 110+ pitches in 5 of them, with a season high of 122 in April against the Padres. He’s currently 4th in the majors in Pitcher Abuse Points. Again, why ride him so hard? This is going to be a sticking point with me all year long. Bochy came to SF with a reputation of handling young pitching well, but I’ve really started to dislike his management of pitchers. He put significant mileage on Cain’s arm last year and we’ve seen Cain struggle some this year. Not saying they are definitely related but it could be a factor. Furthermore, the Giants had Monday off, so the bullpen was fresh. It seems like a poor choice to put Lincecum back out for the 8th after he had exceed 100 pitches and the bullpen was fresh.

It’s just a bizare way to continuously handle Lincecum — the rain delay fiasco included — after the Giants showed some restraint and shut him down early last year.

Quick Update: I also forgot to praise Bengie Molina and Brian Wilson. Molina is hitting like Tedd Williams and Wilson threw a clean inning in the 9th without walking anyone. Molina hit a three run HR that was the difference in last nights game and he’s currently in one of his patented Swing-at-Everything ™ modes with good results.

Stay hot, Bengie.

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Chris
Chris

OGC, I'll have to see if I can rustle up his HR/F% in a Home/Road splits style. I do know that of the 3 home runs that Tim has given up this year, all 3 have been at AT&T. >> So, do you alienate your budding superstar by telling him “No, it’s for your own good”, particularly if the Giants are trying to sign him to a long term contract? I just want a little protection, he's not made of glass but it's pointless to run him back out with a fresh bullpen, him hitting 3rd in the next inning, and the fact that he was already well beyond 100 pitches. Thanks for the Krukow recap, I hadn't heard that yet. Lincecum is an amazing talent and he seems smart enough to make the needed changes. He constantly is quoted as saying "I've got more work to do" when it comes to pitching. I like that hunger. Mr. Lomez, Thanks a bunch for pointing out the starters thing, I didn't clarify that point very well. It's amazing that Lincecum throws as hard as he does over the course of 100+ pitches. I wonder if he could touch 100mph if he was coming out of the bullpen. He was up in the zone a lot last night, so you could very well be right that he was throwing the 4-seamer more often. I'll need to watch the MLB.tv archive again to refresh my memory.

MrLomez
MrLomez

Not trying to be an asshole but wanted to clarify that Lincecum has the 4th fastest fastball just among starters. I only point this out because Brian Wilson (95.0), Billy Sadler (94.4), and Merkin Valdez (94.3) all best Lincecum in this regard. Overall Timmy is 23rd. And did it seem like he was throwing in inordinate amount of 4-seamers last night? It's difficult to say because Pitch f/x doesn't distinguish between types of fastballs, but it looked to me like he was going upstairs to lefties with the 4-seamer as a strikeout pitch, whereas he was using the 2-seamer to go hard in and down to righties. Am I imagining this?

obsessivegiantscompu
obsessivegiantscompu

Nice analysis of Lincecum. About the xFIP, I don't know if the data is available, but I would like to see what the difference in HR per flyball rate is between his home and road. AT&T is a known HR deflator, so it would be interesting to see what his road HR per flyball rate is - xFIP assumes a set HR rate as the mean that a pitcher would regress to, but there are pitchers who are good enough to defy that rule (like sinkerballers) and I am curious how his numbers look like since he's a groundballer. Yeah, I wasn't too happy about bringing Lincecum out again, but when you are the manager you are dealing with the player's ego and Lincecum clearly wants to pitch a complete game, so you throw him some bones before you put on the brakes. 120 pitches is the mark that Bill James uses as the point where abuse is happening, so at least Bochy beat that. So, do you alienate your budding superstar by telling him "No, it's for your own good", particularly if the Giants are trying to sign him to a long term contract? If this is happening all season-long, then that is one thing, but once in a while is not a big thing, they are not china dolls that will break if you use them. Krukow in his show this morning stated some interesting stuff. One was that Lincecum was focused on getting an out with 2-3 pitches early on - which suggests the complete game angle. Two was that he said that Lincecum still did not know what he was doing half the time - just wait until he puts it all together. Three was that one thing Tim needs to learn is that full effort is not necessary to get major league hitters out - a lesson Sandy Koufax eventually learned - but throwing strikes is. Fourth was that Righetti has been slowly bringing in lessons - like waiting for failures and mistakes - in order not to overwhelm a young player trying to implement everything at once, and that Lincecum has advanced from a 2-pitch pitcher last season to a 4-pitch pitcher to start this season, and now he is learning to be more of a finesse pitcher, a nice steady progression. Fifth was that Lincecum has something that Koufax had - a lot of "stuff" - and once he learns to ratchet down his speed a bit more in order to get strikes and let his stuff take over, he will really take off.