- First inning in pro ball: check!
- First inning with the major league team in spring training: check!
- First inning in the majors: check!
What's the Big Deal? Another Hurdle Gone
Why the significance? Not that there's anything wrong with this, but when Lincecum comes into a new and different situation, his adrenaline flies skyward and so does his pitches, going high in the strike zone, where professional hitters swat them all around the field, mercilessly. But then he learns and calms down the next time, so that he's learned from that, gotten comfortable with that. That's what happened in the 9th against Chicago, his pitches flew upward, and he got whacked, then removed. That's OK, he usually learns his lesson the first time, in his time as a pro.
He doesn't always do that. His first bad spell as a pro, earlier this season, I think in June, he just did horribly until he finally figured out that trying to throw the ball faster and harder just makes things worse, so he calmed down and he started mowing down batters again. He has been good since then, for the most part (except for Pittsburgh), until that meltdown in the 9th against Chicago.
So that's OK with me, just another notch on the headboard, another tickbox checked off, in Tim Lincecum's development. Hopefully he gets most of these out of the way in 2007. Then in 2008, we would have a bonafide Cy Young candidate starting for our rotation.
Sign Lincecum NOW!
Sabean, first order of the 2007 offseason: get Lincecum signed to a long-term contract, STAT!!! The more rookie mistakes he makes, the better the case we can make for giving him a lower sized contract offer.
But I suspect that his agent team will be playing hardball, we won't luck out like we did with Cain's contract, we would probably have to play Lincecum anywhere from 50% to 100% more (worse case 200% I think) in contract size than Cain, to get him long-term. I think he'll still be worth every penny.
I agree completely that the Giants should be trying hard to sign Tim long term. I suggested they do so last winter, which would have been revolutionary (and thus so unlike the Giants), but in retrospect pretty darn smart.
ReplyDeleteAs for Tim's getting amped up and overthrowing in the ninth inning of his eight-inning gem against the Cubbies, I have a couple of other takes.
First, he actually began getting the baseball up in the eighth inning. After throwing 55 strikes on just 72 pitches over the first seven innings, exhibitting exceptional control, Tim threw just nine strikes and seven balls in the eighth. Worse, seven of his 12 fastballs were up, and six of the 12 were strikes. What got Tim out of the eighth were his back-to-back change ups to strike out pinch hitter Darryl Ward.
So with the handwriting on the wall that Tim was getting his fastball up (although only one of his four off-speed pitches was high in the inning), what do the Giants do? They call for five straight fastballs in the ninth. Four of the five were up, and three of the five became hits.
So my question is, why didn't the Giants spot Tim's getting the ball up in the eighth inning and realize that they needed to begin throwing more off-speed stuff? Tim threw 12 strikes on his 15 off-speed pitches in the game.
And why in the world did the Giants call for only 15 off-speed pitches out of 93, when Tim's great curve and deceptive change up are actually his hardest pitches to hit?
Incidentally, beginning with that ninth inning, Tim has yielded 17 hits in just nine innings. 13 of the 17 hits (and 21 total bases) have been against the fastball, with four hits (all singles) coming against the curve and nary a knock against Tim's change up.
The Giants and Tim would benefit from mixing up his pitches. I'm guessing his optimal mix would be something like 60% fastballs, 20% curves and 20% change ups. It might be more like 55% fastballs, 20% curves and 25% change ups.
But it certainly doesn't seem to be calling 70-75% fastballs -- and in the case of Tim's game against the Cubbies, 84% heaters. Tim's fastball and his control were excellent for the first seven innings of that game.
In the eighth inning, he started getting the fastball up. The Giants failure to notice that fact wound up ruining what might have been their best-pitched game of the season.
I was at that game, sitting right behind the plate in the boxes. Rarely have I gone from such ecstacy to such agony in the space of so few pitches.
And I was calling for more off-speed stuff well before the eighth inning and actually called the second straight change up to Ward that ended the eighth inning and set off Tim's little hand pump.
Instead of merely being pumped up, the Giants should have been analyzing. It wasn't hard to spot that Tim's fastball was getting up beginning with the eighth inning. But clearly the Giants themselves missed it.