Again, the media molds public opinion with their lack of knowledge of the situation. Ann Killion noted, "His rise through the Giant's farm system (13 minor league games, including six for the San Jose Giants) was too quick to allow for tinkering [with his pitching delivery]." Despite her willingness to opine on the Giants condition, she's too busy to keep up with their top prospects, even when she has the best source for Giants information working in a nearby cubicle in Andy Baggarly. Madison Bumgarner, who had not even thrown one pitch professionally, had his delivery messed with before the 2008 season started, which resulted in three horrible starts for Augusta before the team allowed him to return to his normal delivery, upon which he simply dominated the league, much like Lincecum dominated when he pitched in the minors. So, no, 13 games was plenty enough to mess with Lincecum's delivery, the Giants wisely decided not to.
I realize that she was trying to be glib based on what Lincecum talked about during the press conference (very interesting and it was viewable in real time on-line, pretty cool) but still, get the info right, it wasn't like she was in an interview, she wrote this column up, she could have had Baggarly read it for her to make sure nothing is amiss.
Additionally, I remember hearing when he first came up that, almost every coach has attempted to tweak his mechanics, but his father (I think his name is Chris) who was hyper involved with him from a young age told "The Kid" and his coaches to leave everything alone. I imagine that has a huge part with his delivery staying consistent
ReplyDeleteYeah, he protected his son from a lot of outside instruction and made sure he kept to his regular delivery.
ReplyDeleteForgot to add that I was listening to KNBR this morning and Jayson Stark from ESPN was on and he noted that while he thought Lincecum deserved the award, he was surprised because in a similar situation in 2005, the voters went to the guy with more wins, even though Johan Santana was clearer better otherwise. As Rob Neyer of ESPN showed in his blog, the key difference was probably because Webb's team didn't make the playoffs either: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob
ReplyDeleteThat got me thinking: the Giants went out and did the task I suggested on MCC, that somebody send all the Cy Young voters an information package of how well Lincecum did this season, kind of like how college teams boost their Heisman candidates with sportswriter voters.
Perhaps that helped get Lincecum over the hump because, as Neyer analyzed in his blog above, he justified the reasons why that guy who left Lincecum off his ballot wasn't smoking crack and it wouldn't surprise me if more of the sportswriters would think in such terms.
Still an idiot, but I can at least understand why they think that way, hence why I did not know for sure if Lincecum would win or not, I thought it could go in three different ways. That it was a landslide was even more shocking. Perhaps there is some hope for baseball writers as a whole (though as I have noted before, I really have a problem with the way they handle the Hall of Fame voting; how could Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, etc, not be unanimous? Even Babe Ruth was not unanimous, those people should have been either horse-whipped or thrown out of the writers association permanently)