Tim Lincecum

There's nothing I like more than watching a big pitching prospect debut, and Tim Lincecum of the Giants is a big pitching prospect, although not literally speaking. The pipsqueak, as radio personality Mike Francesca refers to Lincecum as, struck out 104 in 61 2/3 minor league innings and even more intriguing is his stature. He is generously listed at 5'11'', and at 22 years old, he doesn't look a day over 18. He has a funky delivery, violent motion, and consistently works in the mid-90s with his fastball. He also mixes a plus curve with a changeup that according to some scouts, can be his best pitch on some days.

Sunday against the Phillies, Lincecum takes the big league mound for the first time and a debut like this deserves running commentary, and might be intriguing enough to make be hold off on watching the Sopranos until it comes on HBO West at midnight. We shall see.

Top 1st Inning

-Lincy had a 0.29 ERA in 31 innings at AAA Fresno, and two batters into the game, his ERA is infinity. Jimmy Rollins taps one up the middle, and Shane Victorino hits an 0-2 breaking ball in the standing room crowd in right field. Hung that one.

-Lincecum stops messing around and pumps in fastball after fastball, consistently at 96 mph. He strikes out Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Aaron Roward, all swinging with the fastball. At this point, they could all be thrown off by his funky delivery, but the swings against Lincecum were not good. After a mistake to Victorino, Lincy settles in and makes it out of the first with 27 pitches and already three Ks. So far, I'm impressed.

Bottom 1st

-As if Lincecum wasn't enough, one of my favorite pitchers opposes him. Cole Hamels is a frail-looking lefty, with the nastiest changeup you'll ever see. I'm fairly young, but Hamels' changeup is the best pitch I've ever seen. That's just based on the look of it, but by the time his career is over, I'm betting his numbers will show it.

-Randy Winn is a weird player. He played for the Mariners and was an okay player, and after being traded to the Giants, he slugged .680 for SF in 231 at bats in 2005, and then was terrible again last year. A switch hitter, this year he is hitting .480 against left-handers and improves upon that but taking Hamels the other way for a double. I'm scratching my hair out right now thinking about Randy Winn.

- Hamels gets a couple grounders, a walk, and then Wes Helms boots a ball at third base to give San Fran a run. As my co-workers Tony Graham and Steve Falk, both Phillies fans, are finding out, he is a dreadful third-baseman.

-After getting squeezed on a changeup, Hamels blows a fastball by Pedro Feliz to end the inning. The Phillies are already looking like their normal selves by giving away runs.
After One: Philly 2, SF 1.

Top 2nd

-Two easy outs in play for Lincecum, followed by a strikeout of Hamels. During the Hamels at-bat, John Miller and Joe Morgan (tonight's announcing team), decide to forget where they are and talk about Roger Clemens with Peter Gammons. Then again, I don't blame them for ignoring a pitcher facing another pitcher. This is why I can't understand why anyone would want to get rid of the DH.

Bottom 2nd

-Jeez, even more with Roger Clemens! Save it for Sportscenter. This is like talking about baseball on a track blog!

- Todd Linden walks on four pitches, and Kevin Frandsen dunks in a bloop double, bringing up Lincecum with his first career RBI opportunity. Jon Miller informs us that in high school, Lincecum hurt his back while trying to hit and never picked up a bat again until spring training this year. Another reason pitchers should never hit. Lincecum strikes ot swinging.

-Hamels gives up a run on a groundout by Winn, and Omar Vizquel hits one over Rowand's head in centerfield to score another. Shaky start for Hamels, although he's not getting much help on defense.

-Hamels breaks off a nasty change for the K, making Rich Aurilia look like...well, Rich Aurilia. Mariners GM Bill Bavasi chose a more expensive Aurillia over future MVP candidate Carlos Guillien as one of the first orders of business in 2004. It's moves like this that would explain the hint of bitterness in these posts.
Score: SF 3, Philly 2.

Top 3rd

-Lincy hums a 94 mph fastball by J-Roll for K #5. He's starting to show some movement on those fastballs too.

-Victorino hits a frozen rope to Vizquel, who makes a nice play, despite it looking really ugly. Joe Morgan gushes over it for a while, which is fine by me, considering it gets him talking about something else other than Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. ESPN has to work in something on those two in EVERY BROADCAST. Even my Track Notebooks are more diverse than ESPN's discussion topics.

-After a walk to Utley, Howard hits the ball about 430 feet to dead center for a two-run homer. Early on, Lincecum is actually looking a lot like Hamels did when he got called up last year. A lot of Ks, but a lot of home runs. Hamels got called up right around the same time, making his Major League debut on May 12 of last year. At this rate, neither are going to make it out of the fifth inning.

-Lincecum has a little trouble getting himself straight after the Howard homer, but makes a good 3-2 pitch to Rowand to tie him up and get a groundball to third. Morgan seems impressed, saying righthanders can't touch his fastball inside. I'll get more into this in my final assessment, which may be hindered by trying to watch the Sopranos.

Bottom 3rd

-Thanks to HBO West, I'm going with baseball over the Sopranos. Joe Morgan is trying to defend Barry Bonds, which he does poorly. There is a defense, but it's hard to do by denying he used steroids. As I've said before, I am pro-Bonds, so I have no problem with the thought of defending him. But Morgan can't do it.

-Jimmy Rollins catches Bengie Molina's groundball, has a cup of tea, then throws Molina out. My friend passionately argued that Jason Giambi is the slowest player in the Majors, which means he hasn't watched Bengie since he was killing the Yankees in the playoffs two years ago.

-Hamels an tidey 1-2-3 inning.
Score: Philly 4, SF 3.

Top 4th

- Single by Helms to start the inning as Morgan continues on about Bonds, who by the way, isn't even playing today. Morgan says he thinks just as many people were rooting against Hank Aaron as are rooting against Bonds and wishes he could see public polls on Aaron's record breaking season at the time it happened. I'm pretty sure they did have those polls, and the slight majority wanted Aaron to break it. Morgan is basing that purely on the small number of people that did not want Aaron to do it based on the color of his skin and made it known through hate mail and taunting. So because a small number of people yelled and screamed, a majorityof the country disapproved of Aaron. That's Joe Morgan's science.

-Lincecum is still humming, ending the inning on a Rollins pop out to short left. Lincy rolled up a lot of ground balls in the minors, but judging by his stuff, I think he'll be a pretty neutral pitcher in the majors, and may even be more of a flyball pitcher. Fastballs that explode like his are hard to get on top of, and have caused a lot of flyballs so far today. With that said, his groundball outs to flyball outs are 4-3 so far. Too early to tell.

-Hamels gets strikeout number five on a changeup to Linden, which Linden took for strike three. You don't see too many looking strikeouts on changeups, which tells me it must have good movement on it.

-Lincecum is currently trying to bunt, which means he's staying in the game. The fact that he's still trying as I type also means he can't bunt. If I'm part of the Giants organization, I'd hold my breath every time he steps in the batters box.

-Pipsqueak bunts the ball right back to Hamels, who throws it in the dirt to Rollins at second, and everyone is safe. That play typified the Phillies. A bunt back to the mound, which looks good on paper and sounds like an out, but when it's put into action, it blows up in Philly's face. The Phillies look great on paper, look like a contender, and once they're on the field, can't find their back pocket with both hands.

-Hamels rings up another K, freezing Winn with a changeup, and retires Vizquel to end the inning. Stranding the runners after an error is certainly a step in the right direction for this team.

Score: Philly 4, SF 3.

Top 5th

-Lincecum goes 3-2 on Victorino, who singles up the middle. With three hard-hit balls, Victorino must be more excited about the Lincecum era than I am.

-First major problem: the pitch count is up over 80 and he is only throwing 90 mph now after throwing 96 early on. Keep an eye on this in his next few starts.

-Horrible call on a pickoff attempt. Victorino left early and Lincecum threw over to first to start a run-down. Victorino runs into Vizquel waaaaay out of the baseline, but the umpire calls interference on Vizquel, giving Victorino second base. It's just been Victorino's lucky day today. He must have gone to church or something.

-Lincecum throws his 100th pitch high to Burrell for ball four, which spells the end of his day. Since striking out Rollins for the first out of the third inning, Lincecum had no strikeouts and four walks over the next 13 batters while losing 5 mph on his fastball. Something else to note: After Victorino's homer, Lincecum put his curve in his back pocket for pretty much the rest of the game, only using it early in the count.

Some of the things that made Lincecum slip to the 11th pick of the 2006 draft showed. He is physically immature, and he's already 22, so the room for physical development is uncertain. He also puts so much into every pitch (accoding to Miller, Lincecum's father, Chris, said he puts every muscle and every bone from head to toe into his pitches) that stamina becomes a concern at about the 75-80 pitch mark. Couple that with the fact that Lincecum uses a lot of pitches to get his outs, and he will be hard pressed to go six innings on a consistent basis.

There is plenty to like though. His stuff is legit, and despite the Victorino home run, his curveball does look good. The most impressive thing to me was that when he got into hitters counts and the Phillies geared up for his fastball - which he was throwing almost exclusively by that point - they still had trouble hitting it. He is going to miss a lot of bats, but the stamina remains a concern, and Sunday showed why.

Lincecum's final line: 4.1 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 5 BB, 5 K, 2 HR, 8.31 ERA, 4-4 groundout-to-flyout.

Bottom 5th


-I always get a kick out of Joe Morgan introducing "K Zone" to the audience with accompanying sponsor, which varies most weeks. This week it is the "Nationwide K Zone." I think that's what the Braves called Home Plate Umpire Eric Gregg's strike zone in the 1997 NLCS.


-The Giants dink and dunk Hamels for two more runs. Despite all of the puzzling lines that Joe Morgan comes up with, he makes a point that is right on the money: Hamels is a chaneup pitcher, and changeup pitchers tend to fall in love with it, which makes them very predictable. I was thinking this for most of the game and it makes perfect sense. You saw this with Tom Glavine in his first few years with the Mets, when he had to rely on his changeup because his fastball was only about 84 mph and he didn't really throw a curve. Like Glavine, Hamels pitches backwards a lot, meaning he throws his change to set up his fasball. The difference is Hamels can hit 92 on the gun which freezes hitters, and his curve is already nasty. But he throws the change so much, that hitters can safely sit back and just flip the ball out to the opposite field all day. Anyway, the Giants get two runs to tie the game.

Score: Philly 5, SF 5.



Top 6th


-Today's trivia question is presented by Excedrin. Miller asks us to go to excedrin.com for more trivia details. Funny. After two hours of these guys, I just happened to be at excedrin.com anyway. How about that?


-Hamels doubles to the gap, followed by a triple by Rollins that would have been about 10 rows deep in the right-centerfield seats if this game was in Philly. Actually, it might have been in the bullpen, but you get the point.


-Utley ropes a double to right, and it looks like Lincecum's performance wasn't all that bad afterall. He gave up two ropes to Victorino and Howard, but there wasn't much solid contact otherwise. The Phillies have been smoking the ball since Lincecum left.


-Howard just misses another homer, hitting a sky-high fly to Linden in center to end the inning. It looks like he's heating up.

Score: Philly 7, SF 5.


Well I came to see Tim Lincecum and I saw. I'm going to sit back and enjoy the rest of the game and give my fingers a rest. Much like Tim Lincecum, I can't make it past the sixth inning. But me and Timmy are working on that.