Tim Lincecum vs S.F. Giants hisotry

[McCovey]

Ok, I made an off the cuff comment about Tim Lincecum perhaps having the greatest pitching season any S.F. Giants pitcher has ever had. So, me being me, I decided to look up 50 years of S.F. Giants pitchers. I came up with the following list of great pitchers seasons by Giants pitchers. Enjoy.


Name Year GS IP W L ERA ERA+ WHIP K BB CG SHO NOTES:
S. Jones 1959 38 270.7 21 15 2.83 134 1.260 209 109 6 4 TSN PoY, 2nd-CYA, 5th-MVP, All Star
J. Sanford 1962 38 265.3 24 7 3.43 110 1.225 147 92 13 2 2nd-CYA, 7th-MVP
J. Marichal 1963 40 321.3 25 8 2.41 132 0.996 248 61 18 5 11-MVP, All Star
J. Marichal 1964 33 269.0 21 8 2.48 144 1.089 206 52 22 4 15-MVP, All Star
J. Marichal 1965 37 295.3 22 13 2.13 169 0.914 240 46 24 10 9-MVP, All Star
J. Marichal 1966 36 307.3 25 6 2.23 167 0.859 222 36 25 4 6-MVP, All Star
J. Marichal 1968 38 326.0 26 9 2.43 123 1.046 218 46 30 5 5-MVP, All Star
J. Marichal 1969 36 299.7 21 11 2.10 168 0.994 205 54 27 8 23-MVP, All Star
G. Perry 1966 35 255.7 21 8 2.99 124 1.103 201 40 13 3 18-MVP, All Star
G. Perry 1969 39 325.3 19 14 2.49 142 1.171 233 91 26 3
G. Perry 1970 41 238.7 23 13 3.20 125 1.144 214 84 23 5 2nd-CYA, 14th-MVP
M. McCormick 1967 35 262.3 22 10 2.85 117 1.147 150 81 14 5 1st-CYA, 6th-MVP
R. Bryant 1973 39 270.0 24 12 3.53 109 1.315 143 115 8 0 3rd-CYA, 26th-MVP
M. Krukow 1986 34 245.0 20 9 3.05 116 1.057 178 55 10 2 3rd-CYA, 15th-MVP, All Star
R. Reuschel 1989 32 208.3 17 8 2.94 114 1.195 111 54 2 0 8th-CYA, All Star
B. Swift 1993 34 232.7 21 8 2.82 138 1.074 157 55 1 1 2nd-CYA
J. Burkett 1993 34 231.7 22 7 3.65 106 1.140 145 40 2 1 4th-CYA, 24th-MVP, All Star
S. Estes 1997 32 201.0 19 5 3.18 130 1.303 181 100 3 2 All Star
J. Schmidt 2003 29 207.7 17 5 2.34 179 0.953 208 46 5 3 2nd-CYA, 22nd-MVP, All Star
J. Schmidt 2004 32 225.0 18 7 3.20 136 1.076 251 77 4 3 4th-CYA, All Star

[SF Kid]

Are yo 'stirring the pot', Mac? :pound:

[McCovey]

No, not really. I just wanted to see what Lincecum has to do to compare with to the Giants of past. Marichal had some downright nasty seasons. I like his 1966 just a tiny bit more that his other top seasons. I'd never heard of Sam Jones but in '59 he was really good. A starter pitching in 50 games! Wow.

[SF Kid]

Really Mac I don't expect to see seasons like Marichal and company had. I think those days are over in baseball. The game is different and is managed a lot differently today especially for pitchers. Even if a guy is going great they look at pitch counts and when the magic number arrives they're pulled right, wrong or indifferent. I hate that.

[McCovey]

Really Mac I don't expect to see seasons like Marichal and company had. I think those days are over in baseball. The game is different and is managed a lot differently today especially for pitchers. Even if a guy is going great they look at pitch counts and when the magic number arrives they're pulled right, wrong or indifferent. I hate that.
I'm not saying Lincecum will have to pitch as much as Marichal did. But if he goes out and has prime Pedro Martinez kind of seasons in his career that would probably rank him above anyone else in SF Giants history. I agree that during Marichal's time there were factors that allowed Marichal and his peers to pitch 280-300 innings a year. That game today is set up to not allow that. What I've always found interesting though, is that a lot of the greats of that era (Koufax, Marichal, Gibson, Drysdale) all flamed out fairly young. All of them had the look of 300 game winners in their 20s but none of them came close. Yet, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, and Gaylord Perry did win over 300 games. I don't get that. :shrug:

[McCovey]

A good analysis of Lincecum's mechanics.

http://drivelinemechanics.com/2008/06/12/pitcher-analysis-tim-lincecum/

[Bear]

A good analysis of Lincecum's mechanics.

http://drivelinemechanics.com/2008/06/12/pitcher-analysis-tim-lincecum/

Very nice. Thanks!:)

[McCovey]

I saw this interesting article about where Lincecum's pitching mechanics came from on SI.com. Enjoy.

Part 1 of 4
__________________________________________________ ______________

How Tiny Tim Became a Pitching Giant

The mechanics of diminutive Tim Lincecum -- looks 18, throws 98 -- are more than an act of violence, they're a marvel of modern science. Unconventionally honed by his father, that delivery has produced the most fascinating ace of his generation

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/2008/writers/tom_verducci/07/01/lincecum0707/p1_lincecum.jpg
The normal stride length for a pitcher is 77% to 87%
of his height. Lincecum's stride is 129%, some 7 1/2 feet.

As if peering around a corner, the Freak tilts his head slightly to the left as he begins his explosive, homemade pitching delivery. What lurks around that corner is either greatness or danger, which makes tiny Tim Lincecum, all 172 pounds of him, the most fascinating pitcher in baseball. Not since Mark (the Bird) Fidrych spoke to baseballs, manicured mounds and baffled hitters more than 30 years ago has a pitcher been this consistent and this captivating from the start of his career. Lincecum does not throw a baseball as much as he launches it, 98-mph rockets somehow expelled, with finely tuned kinetic energy, from a batboy's body. He scares hitters and scouts alike.

"There aren't too many comparables at his size, especially as starting pitchers," says Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro, whose team in 2005 drafted but did not sign Lincecum, still available at pick No. 1,261. A stumped Indians scouting department could not agree whether the undersized righthander was an ace, a closer, a setup man or a horrific medical disaster waiting to happen. "It looks like his head is going to snap off and his arm is going to fly off," Shapiro continues. "Body type has something to do with it, but the way he throws too."

"Timmy?" Giants manager Bruce Bochy says when approached by a reporter about Lincecum. "You mean the Freak?"

Lincecum, 24, his boyish face framed by an ink-black curtain of shaggy hair, has little use for comb or razor. The San Francisco Giants' ace has been stopped for trespassing by clubhouse security attendants who don't believe he is a ballplayer. In early June he showed up for work in Washington, D.C., wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a black wool hat pulled low in the 90° heat. He is 5' 10" -- maybe. He is 172 sinewy pounds of skin, bones, fast-twitch muscles and, in the heat of battle, intracooled circulatory and nervous systems.

It frightens the chaw out of the cheeks of traditional baseball people that someone so lithe can throw 98 mph. The skittish Baltimore Orioles, picking ninth in the '06 draft, basically took him off their board -- though by then Lincecum, a junior at Washington, was a two-time Pac-10 pitcher of the year who had struck out more batters than any other pitcher in conference history, including Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson and Mark Prior. "We took a high school hitter," recalls then-Baltimore general manager Jim Duquette, referring to Bill Rowell, a third baseman who is hitting .225 in high A ball. "There was a feeling that [Lincecum] was short, not a real physical kid, and mechanically he was going to break down, that there was enough stress on his arm, elbow and shoulder. Our scouting department kind of pushed him down because of the medical aspect."

Six of the first seven teams to pick in that draft selected pitchers. All of them passed on Lincecum, even the Seattle Mariners, who played it safe in choosing the strapping 6' 3" righthander Brandon Morrow -- a guy they use in relief at that -- rather than the Freak in their own backyard. The Giants took Lincecum at No. 10. He pitched only 13 times in the minors, allowing seven earned runs and whiffing 104 batters in 62 2/3 innings, before it became obvious to San Francisco that it had a prodigy who was wasting his time down there.

Since his May 2007 call-up Lincecum has been only slightly more challenged by major league hitters. In 40 starts through Sunday, he was 16-6 with a 3.30 ERA and 264 strikeouts in 256 innings. Only one starting pitcher in baseball history, Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets in the mid-'80s, has won 70% of his decisions over his first two seasons while logging more strikeouts than innings.

Lincecum's reliability at the start of his career is historically remarkable. He is one of only seven pitchers since 1956 to throw 30 quality starts in his first 40 games. If there is any justice in baseball, or the least bit of awareness of plot, Lincecum will take the ball as the starter at Yankee Stadium in this month's All-Star Game just as Fidrych did in Philadelphia in 1976.

How can it be that a runt like Lincecum, who learned virtually everything he knows about pitching from a parts inventory employee for Boeing, is this good, this reliable while a 6' 5", 225-pound, broad-backed pitcher template such as Prior, the epitome of modern training and coaching, routinely breaks down?

The Boeing employee who taught Lincecum how to pitch is his dad, Chris, a vibrant, fast-talking 60-year-old whom you don't dare disappoint with the wrong answer when he asks, "You want the long version or the short version?" One day last month Chris telephoned his son with a concern.

"Tim, everybody is calling you a freak."
"Well, Dad, I am. Why?"
"How can you say you're a freak? You're just a good athlete."
"O.K., is Michael Jordan a freak? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus?"
"Yeah, I'd consider them freaks," Chris said. "Then, O.K., you're a freak."

Chris, only 5' 11", 175 himself, pitched as a youth and claims to have thrown 88 mph at age 52. He was teaching son Sean, four years older than Tim, on a backyard mound in Bellevue, Wash., when Tim, at five, began piggybacking on those lessons. The mechanics Tim employs now are the same he used then, the same as Chris used as a boy himself. "My dad and I aren't very large guys, so it's about efficiency and getting the most out of my body that I can," Tim says. "He learned that, and I'm a modified version of that. He was the prototype, and I'm version 2.0." Before Tim accepted a full ride at Washington, Chris made the Huskies' coaches promise they wouldn't change his mechanics.

Chris designed a weight-training program for Tim and videotaped all his amateur games -- the two of them would critically review them the next day -- except for road games when Tim was in college. By then Chris knew his younger son's mechanics so well that even while listening to those games on the radio, he could "see" what Tim was doing wrong. "Watch the angle of your shoulders!" he might yell, for example, at the radio when his son's location was particularly off.
In the stands Chris would sit behind home plate and flash signals to Tim, who knew exactly what to correct. If, for instance, Chris slapped his thighs, Tim knew to "sit down on my legs" through his delivery, to use the lower half of his body more. "His dad obviously did a very good job with Timmy," says Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti. "I treat Timmy differently from most pitchers: I leave him alone."
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http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/images/1.gif

[McCovey]

Part 2 of 4

The last part of turning Tim into a major league pitcher was the hardest part for Chris: He had to let go. Lincecum 2.0 belongs to the world now, to the big cities and the fancy hotels and the media and everything else that comes with the spectacle of big league life. In Bellevue, where Chris still gets up each day for work at 5:30 a.m., the phone doesn't ring quite as often with the happy promise of his son's voice. "I used to hear from him every night, even when he played in the Cape Cod League," Chris says. "As soon as he got to the majors, I hear from him about once a week. But I understand. It's his life. I'm here for him."You know, I'm built almost identical to Timmy. He's kind of like my soul mate. I pray for only one thing, and it's for my sons, and it's not about the most wins or getting rich. It's one little prayer. I pray my kids are safe and healthy."

And suddenly Chris, who is to elocution what Tim is to velocity, actually pauses. There is silence for one beat. When he resumes talking, his voice is much softer, as if now he were speaking only to himself.

"I miss the hell out of him."

At liberty high, Tim pitched as a freshman at 4' 11" and 85 pounds. As a sophomore he was 5' 2", 100 pounds. He hit a growth spurt in his junior year, all the way to 5' 8", 125. By the time he entered college, fresh off a senior season in which he was named Washington's 2003 Gatorade High School Player of the Year and drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 48th round (he turned down their offer), Lincecum stood all of 5' 9", 135 pounds.

And he threw a baseball 94 mph.

Such velocity was possible only because Lincecum's delivery is an engineering marvel, and he has the athleticism and fine-gauge musculature to pull it off time after time after time. Most pitchers are taught a delivery in segments, such as a step back, a gathering of the limbs while balanced over the rubber, the loading of the ball in a cocked position behind the head and then a fast uncoiling of the body as the arm comes forward. Hall of Fame righthander Robin Roberts used to say, "If you're going to hurry, hurry late," a reference to accelerated arm speed at the end of the more measured movements to keep the body balanced.

Lincecum, by contrast, pitches with the intentions of a drag racer: It's go time from the start. His delivery gives the illusion of being one movement rather than the cobbling of several separate ones. Righetti calls this apparent seamlessness "flow."

"The hardest thing to do is slow down, gather yourself, then throw a ball," says the pitching coach. "Greg Maddux, Bob Gibson, Rich Gossage -- they all flowed through their delivery. They keep their momentum going. Those flow guys are the ones who can sustain the grind of pitching. I think [Tim's] a longevity guy, I really do."

The quickness of Lincecum's small body is what scared off most scouts -- that and what has become something of a trademark, a tilting of his head toward first base in the early phase of his delivery. The scouts equated his body speed with violence. That assessment, however, is akin to watching the Blue Angels air-show team and not seeing the precision because of a fixation with the implicit danger. Lincecum generates outrageous rotational power -- the key element to velocity -- only because his legs, hips and torso work in such harmony.

"When the scouts started looking at him," says Chris, "size was 80 percent of their problem [with Tim] and style about 20 percent. I think one guy said his mechanics were unorthodox, and people ran with it. His mechanics are very efficient. Extremely efficient. You don't see wasted energy. When he's done, he's not exhausted."

One key to Lincecum's delivery is to keep his left side, especially his left shoulder, aimed toward his target for as long as possible. "Don't open up too soon because then you lose leverage," Tim says. "If you twist a rubber band against itself, the recoil is bigger. The more torque I can come up with, the better."

Where Lincecum truly separates himself from most pitchers is the length of his stride. It is ridiculously long as it relates to his height. And just as his left foot, the landing foot, appears to be nearing the ground at the end of his stride, he lifts it as if stepping over a banana peel -- extending his stride even more. The normal stride length for a pitcher is 77% to 87% of his height. Lincecum's stride is 129%, or roughly 7 1/2 feet.
"That just came naturally," Tim says. "My dad always told me to sit down on my back leg as long as I could and push off as much as I could. I'm trying to get as much out of my body as possible. I've got to use my ankles, my legs, my hips, my back. . . . That's why I'm so contorted and it looks like I'm giving it full effort when it's not exactly full effort."

As for the "step-over" move near the end of his stride, Lincecum explains, "That's from my hips. I'm getting everything toward the target, and my hips want to go. My hips can't just go and open up. I'm trying to create torque. That's when everything kind of explodes. My body comes, and [my arm] is just kind of along for the ride."

[McCovey]

Part 3 of 4

For some 20 years ASMI has studied pitchers in the lab by pasting reflective sensors on their bodies, capturing their pitching motion with eight high-speed cameras and running the information through its proprietary computer code. ASMI generates a report with 42 precise measurements, such as elbow, hip and torso rotational speeds, shoulder abduction (how many degrees the shoulder pulls away from its axis) and stride length. ASMI can find possible injury risks by comparing those numbers with the normative range for pitchers. (The best pitchers typically don't show abnormally high measurements in any one area; what makes them special is that they fall in the normative range across the board.) About eight to 10 major league teams, including the Red Sox, Indians and A's, send a total of about 50 pitchers to the ASMI lab each year. At a time when keeping pitchers healthy may be the single most important element in building a successful team, ASMI's work is more essential than ever.

"We've learned about what the red flags are and how to train movements that will be green flags," Peterson says, who was fired by the Mets on June 17 as part of a purge that included manager Willie Randolph. "And most of the people who cannot perform the movement patterns have some genetic disposition -- either their hips are locked or they don't have the flexibility -- so that the major red flags in deliveries you get from the lab are not fundamental-skill issues. They're physical and conditioning issues."

Most front offices, coaches and pitchers, however, rely on the same observational approach to pitching mechanics that has been in place for more than 100 years. Such analysis by "eyeballing" is combined with a preference to leave a pitcher alone, no matter how poor his mechanics may be, if he is getting good results. "That philosophy," Peterson says, "would lend itself to people who buy expensive cars and stop changing the oil and rotating the tires. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' People don't take care of ? their home that way; they don't take care of their car that way; they don't take care of ? their bodies that way."

Mark Prior is a classic example of a high-performing pitcher who was permitted to break down because of poor mechanics. Ironically, Prior was often hailed for his "flawless" mechanics when the Cubs drafted the righthander out of USC with the No. 2 pick in 2001, though that assessment seems to have been influenced by scouts' preference for his 6' 5", 225-pound body type. Studied closely, his mechanics included two severe red flags: 1) Prior lifted his throwing elbow higher than his shoulder before reaching the loaded position, increasing the stress on his elbow and shoulder; and 2) unlike Lincecum's dynamic late torso rotation, Prior rotated his hips and torso before getting to the loaded position. With the letters of Prior's jersey already facing the target, his arm could not simply "go along for the ride" -- the ride was over, so his arm had to generate all of its own power.

Prior went 41-23 over his first four seasons in the big leagues. During that time, in 2003, when Prior was on his way to a career-high 18 wins, Peterson gave a presentation to the Oakland scouting department about "certain red flags in a delivery that we can't do much about" as the A's prepared for the draft. The idea was to avoid sinking large signing bonuses into players with a high potential to break down. (Late picks, because of their lower cost, don't carry the same concern.)

One of Oakland's scouts, responding to Peterson's red-flag warnings, said, "Hey, that's what Prior does. Are you saying that we shouldn't draft a player like that?"

Replied Peterson, "No, not exactly. He's one of the best pitchers in the league right now, but what I am saying is, If he doesn't have maximum [shoulder] rotation, it will lead to injury. It's like slamming the brakes over and over. The brake pads are going to wear out until it's metal on metal."

Prior has suffered a series of shoulder injuries that have limited him to one win and nine starts in the three seasons since. Still only 27, he is out for the season -- again -- after surgery to repair a tear in his right shoulder. "Prior is almost all upper body," Chris Lincecum says. "You could cut his legs off and he would throw just as hard. I don't like to put my finger on players, but I've been doing this a long time. I've said, 'He's going to blow his elbow out' or 'His back will go out.' Sure enough, it happens, including Dice-K [Daisuke Matsuzaka], Jake Peavy, Prior. . . . I have a hard time enjoying the game. I'm sitting there criticizing the pitcher. It hurts to watch pitchers. Seventy percent of the pros have poor mechanics."

Bobby Brownlie was supposed to be Tim Lincecum. A 6-foot righthander from Rutgers who hit 97 mph on the gun, Brownlie was regarded as one of the top pitchers in the 2002 draft. Peterson was working as the A's pitching coach at the time. Just before the draft, Oakland G.M. Billy Beane gave Peterson videotapes of some 20 pitchers the A's were considering as draft picks and told him to break down each pitcher not by stuff and performance but by the biomechanics of their deliveries.

The previous winter Peterson had met Brownlie at a banquet and told him, "Hey, I hear you're great. Congratulations, I hear you're going to be a [first round] pick." But when he watched Brownlie on the tape Beane had given him, Peterson says, "I'm literally sick to my stomach. I'm going, 'This is so sad.' "

A few days later, when Beane asked Peterson what he thought of Brownlie, the pitching coach replied, "He has certain characteristics in his delivery that will lead to shoulder problems."

The Cubs took Brownlie with the 21st pick -- bypassing future big leaguers Matt Cain, Joe Blanton, Jon Lester and Jonathon Broxton -- and lavished him with a $2.5 million signing bonus. Within three years Brownlie could not throw any harder than the mid-80s, and minor league hitters were crushing his pitches. Chicago released him in March 2007. Brownlie spent much of last year playing independent league baseball and is now pitching for the Washington Nationals' Double A Harrisburg affiliate. In May '07 Brownlie told SNY.tv, "The major question about me is why my velocity has dipped in the past couple of years. . . . There's really no answer to it; we don't know what's going on."

Says Peterson, "How many Robert Brownlies are out there every year, and how many of them can be saved? That's what drives me into the amateur market. Because he could be saved. No question in my mind."

[McCovey]

Part 4 of 4

Peterson and Duquette (the former Orioles G.M.), in conjunction with ASMI, have formed a private start-up to bring pitching biomechanics mainstream. Their fundamental challenge is to make the hardware and expertise of the ASMI lab portable with sensorless technology. On a major league level, for instance, that would mean giving pitchers biomechanical feedback in real time during the game on a clubhouse monitor. On the amateur market, it would mean testing top pitchers at so-called showcase events such as the Area Code Games and Perfect Game and sending them home with a diagnosis and prescription, including drills and a conditioning program to turn red flags into green ones.

"It's very close to coming out, and it's going to turn into a competitive field pretty quickly," Duquette says. "The last time I looked there were hundreds of millions of dollars [worth of pitchers] on the disabled list. Why wouldn't you want to find an answer in that regard? The number of [elbow] and shoulder surgeries is at an alltime high. To have an analysis done and have a program to reduce the [number] of injuries and surgeries is long overdue."

According to Fleisig, the No. 1 injury risk for pitchers is overuse. Young pitchers who continued to pitch with arm fatigue are 36 times more likely to be seriously injured. The risk is exacerbated by poor mechanics. "After someone has pitched for so many years, there are so many weak links in the chain already," Peterson says. "The dynamic power [of the start-up] is at the amateur level. Most people are of the belief that when you talk about fundamental skills of sport, the younger you begin, the better off you are. But the longer you wait to pitch, the better you are. Because understanding the rotational forces is so great, if you're out of synch, you're damaging your arm with every pitch. You can hit for a long time and be a bad batter, and you're not going to injure yourself. Not true with pitching. You will get hurt.

"And those kids, they can and will be saved."

Brad Lincoln, whom the Pittsburgh Pirates drafted six spots ahead of Lincecum, missed all of last season with a blown elbow and has not made it past Class A ball. The other five pitchers selected before Lincecum in 2006 -- the Mariners' Morrow, the Kansas City Royals' Luke Hochevar, the Los Angeles Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw, the Florida Marlins' Andrew Miller (a Detroit Tigers draftee) and the Colorado Rockies' Greg Reynolds -- are a combined 20-31 in the majors, or four more wins (and 25 more losses) than Lincecum has. Lincecum has a .727 winning percentage for a team that has played .394 baseball (69-106) in the games that he hasn't started.

"In my 13 years in the big leagues," San Francisco infielder Rich Aurilia says, "this is the only guy I've seen who really is worth the hype. The first one. The real deal. And the reason I say that is not just the stuff. That's obvious to everybody. But it's the fact that he's a great kid who is smart, who is willing to learn and who respects the game. I really mean that. He's an easy kid to root for, and I don't say that just because he's my teammate. He's going to be great for this game.''
On that hot, early-June night in Washington, Lincecum carved up the Nationals with such ease that he missed the strike zone only 28 times to 25 batters. He bore 94-mph two-seamers into the knuckles of righthanded hitters, blew 97-mph four-seamers to every edge of the strike zone, snapped off wicked 80-mph curveballs and fiendishly disguised downward-breaking 84-mph split changeups with the same ferocious arm speed as his fastball. Lincecum allowed one run in seven innings; he threw 83 pitches. Afterward, as always, he showered and jumped back into his skateboarder attire without bothering to ice his arm. "Never," Tim says. "Like my dad says, 'Ice is made for two things: injuries and my drinks.' "

"I thought I'd have more problems with his delivery," Nationals first baseman Aaron Boone says, "but it wasn't as deceptive as I thought. The fastball, though, is big-time. And that hammer [the curveball] is really good. That was impressive."

Shapiro, the Indians' G.M., recently pulled up the original notes from when Cleveland scouts and executives were trying to decide what to make of Lincecum before the 2005 draft. "No. 2 starter.... Wonder if he's going to hold up as a starter.... Freaky..... Maybe a Frankie Rodriguez[-type] bullpen guy.... Potential closer/setup man.... Potential front of the rotation....." Shapiro said, "We're split. Probably more reliever than starter. There was some concern that he would have to get to the big leagues quickly because you weren't sure he could make it through the usual four hundred to five hundred innings as a starter in the minors. His arm speed is ridiculous -- like it's going to fly off one day."

Chris Lincecum never needed a primer on biomechanics to know that the scouts who doubted his son were wrong. As ASMI -- with its proprietary measurements and motion-capture technology -- pushes pitching further toward quantitative analysis, an aviation parts worker with a backyard mound, a camcorder and an intuitive understanding of how his son's body moves through space traffics in simpler explanations. "I believe," Chris says, "in something called dangle."
Dangle is a term you surely will not find among ASMI's 42 measurements. Dangle refers to the looseness of a pitcher's arm action, the well-lubricated unhinging of the limbs and body, which helps explain why Chris regards Satchel Paige and Sandy Koufax, two hallowed flow pitchers, as the spiritual forefathers to Tim's mechanics. "He'll throw forever," Chris once posted on a blog, referring to his son, "and maintain his velocities and the best breaking ball since Sandy Koufax and the best fastball since Gibson and Feller."

Says Chris now, "A friend told me someday everybody will be throwing like Tim. I hope they do."
"Can't happen," Righetti says, "because few pitchers are as athletic as Tim."

The father's job is done. Version 2.0 is a finished product. Tim is a treasure, a reliable, workhorse major league starter, but also a testament to that unmeasurable art and mystery that always remain within the discipline of pitching. "My dad would notice itty-bitty things with my mechanics and make it second nature for me," Tim says. "Now I'm making adjustments quicker. It's nice to have him there, but I don't need him there to tell me what's going on. I can make those adjustments pitch to pitch now as opposed to game to game."

Maybe the phone doesn't ring as often, and maybe Chris no longer is there behind the backstop with his camcorder and his hand signals. But whenever Tim stands on a big league mound with a baseball in his hand, a 172-pound confounder of hitters and convention, the father is there.

"In my head I can hear his voice," Tim says. "Sometimes I'll be thinking, What would he be saying right now? What am I doing? Because we've been doing it for so long. I'm still young, but I've been doing my mechanics for over three quarters of my life. It should be coming easier to me on the mound. In the back of my mind I'm hearing things that he would say."

Sit down on your legs.... Relax your shoulders.... Left side on target.... Pick up the frickin' dollar....

And then he is ready. The Freak begins to coil and release again. And when the motion is just about perfect, when it approaches that unquantifiable state of dangle, it is not just his right arm that comes along for the ride. The rest of us come too, filled with wonder and awe.

[SF Kid]

Quite a read.

Thanks Mac.

[McCovey]

Quite a read.

Thanks Mac.
Yeah, some of the techno-pitching mechanics gobbledygook was way over my head. But the parts about Tim Lincecum's dad were pretty interesting.

[SF Kid]

Haven't seen an in depth article like that in a long time.

[Bear]

Now Lincecum is great and we are all on the same page with him.:beerbang:

[SF Kid]

He's great in one+ year? Come on.

[McCovey]

Good Lincecum article in the latest ESPN The Mag. :awesomework.gif

__________________________________________________ ____________

Just Go With It

Big league scouts told Tim Lincecum he was too small to succeed. Fantasy owners passed him over because they weren't sure he'd hold up with that crazy motion. But he has news for all of 'em: it wasn't magic dust that helped him win the Cy Young Award.

by Tim Keown

On a bright January morning at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Tim Lincecum prepares to play catch. He has brought along his friend and roommate, Sean Webster, and now they hop out of the third base dugout with their gloves and three clean baseballs, ready to go to work. They stand about 40 feet apart. Lincecum rolls his shoulders once or twice, turns his chin to each shoulder, grabs a ball out of his glove, rocks back and fires.

To watch this 170-pound man throw a baseball is to witness a miracle in a minor key. His first throw—his very first one—leaves his hand and reaches Webster almost simultaneously. And Sean, poor Sean, isn't quite ready for this. He played college baseball for a bit at Gonzaga and was Lincecum's equal on the mound when they were both juniors at Liberty High School in Renton, Wash. (Their senior year saw Lincecum create some separation, as Webster readily admits.) But that was a few years ago, and right now Webster isn't so much catching a baseball as he is fighting for his life. When he stops the first throw with the heel of his glove shoved against his navel, it brings to mind footage of an old-time circus performer being hit in the stomach with a cannonball.

"Hey, Timmy, can you move over a little?" Webster asks, sweeping his glove to the right. "I'm having trouble picking it up. There's a glare off those seats behind you." Lincecum moves, but the battle continues. Webster is focusing like a near-sighted man reading an eye chart while Lincecum seems physically incapable of doing anything—even passing the salt—at less than 85 mph.

After about five throws, an obvious question occurs to a bystander: Is this any way to warm up one of the most valuable arms in baseball?

"Yeah, I guess," Lincecum says. "Actually, I'm not real big on warming up. I don't know, it's just the way my body works. I just go with it. That's why so many people thought I could be a good closer. It doesn't take me long."

Life's traditional velocity doesn't apply to Lincecum. Dick Tidrow, a Giants executive who scouted the pitcher at the University of Washington before the team chose him with the 10th pick of the 2006 draft, watched Lincecum's first start at Class-A San Jose that summer and told GM Brian Sabean, "This kid's going to get there a lot faster than you think."

Lincecum was called up to San Francisco in May 2007, after just 62 minor league innings. Last year, in his first full big league season, he won the NL Cy Young Award, going 18–5 and leading the majors with 265 strikeouts. Along the way, he defied the scouts and general managers who questioned whether his 5'11" (maybe) frame and much-dissected motion could withstand life as a frontline starter. In fact, he got better and stronger as the season progressed, going 7–2 in August and September and pitching at least seven innings in nine of his last 12 starts.

Lincecum might just be the most unlikely dominant athlete in team sports today, baseball's equivalent of Allen Iverson in his prime. When scouts told him he was small, Lincecum said, "Yeah, I am. There's not much I can do about that." Except punch out hitters, over and over. The message is the same for scouts and fantasy owners alike: Don't question what you see. Simply appreciate it.

In the fantasy game it's especially important to gauge young pitchers early, because they often peak before hitters, whose best years generally don't start until they hit 26. But before Lincecum broke out, the stats guys didn't quite know what to do with him. Heading into last season, ESPN.com ranked him 24th among fantasy starters, behind, among others, Rich Hill (who got demoted), Aaron Harang (who was awful) and Erik Bédard (injured). He's now No. 2, trailing only Johan Santana. That's what a Cy Young and a sweet WHIP can do for you.

Well beyond the numbers, there is a lightness to Lincecum, a bright-eyed wonder that is cynicism's antidote. With his shaggy hair and easy grin and crooked teeth (now being straightened by a Hollywood orthodontist), he's 24 going on 12. There is a baseball cap or wool beanie permanently affixed to his head. "People ask me why I always have my head covered," he says. With that, he lifts his cap to reveal a helmet of matted, black hair.

"See? Now you know." He showers intermittently and makes no apology. "I might go three days," he says with a shrug. "If it feels right, I go with it."
Sometimes Tim (Timmy to anyone who has met him more than once) will be so intrigued by the many choices at a fast food restaurant that he'll order three meals, picking and choosing after laying them out on the table at his San Francisco condo. "A one-man buffet," Webster says. And Lincecum's kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm is viral: His excellence on the mound was so welcome last year that Giants employees greeted each other with "Happy Lincecum Day" each time their ace (their salvation, their joy) took the ball.

His first big purchase as a big leaguer was a Mercedes CLK55 (his number) that he bought from teammate Dave Roberts. "Isn't that cool?" Lincecum asks as he drives toward the Embarcadero. "I bought Dave Roberts' car."
Chris Lincecum sums up the younger of his two sons this way: "Timmy's a little goofy, but he's a little goofy because he's a kid. You look at him and you'd swear he's 16, but put him on the mound and you'd swear he's 35." In one well-traveled story from last year, the ace walked through the clubhouse and suddenly did a complete backflip, sticking a perfect landing. Centerfielder Aaron Rowand, one of the crustier Giants, took Lincecum to task immediately, telling him he was too valuable to endanger himself with such frivolity. The pitcher didn't argue, but his father says, "They don't understand what kind of athlete he is. He's not going to hurt himself doing that."

One of many photographs displayed prominently in the elder Lincecum's family room in Bellevue, Wash., is from Timmy's days as a member of a fifth-grade basketball team. There were seven players on the squad, and league rules mandated that everyone had to spend some time on the bench. In this photo, one boy has his head in his hands, eyes cast downward, clearly pouting because he isn't in the game; the other boy, feet off the ground, mouth in midscream, is raising his fists to the sky as he reacts to something the camera can't see.

The second kid on the bench, the one jumping around, is Tim Lincecum. "Whenever someone asks me about Timmy, I show them that picture," Chris says. "That tells people who he is better than I ever could. He's a great athlete, but more than that, he just loves to be part of whatever he's doing."

Two hours before a September start last season, Lincecum could be found lying on his side on the floor of the Giants' clubhouse, his head propped up by his valuable right arm. A few feet in front of him sat Barry Zito, strumming an acoustic guitar. It had the feel of summer camp. "He was swooning me," Lincecum says.

Even now, with a 25–10 record through 57 major league starts, Lincecum sometimes stops without warning and says to Webster, "Dude, I'm in the big leagues." After games in which he pitches, he goes home and awaits the highlights. There might be other friends around, Lincecum's girlfriend might be in from New Jersey (they met at spring training last year), but at some point Webster will invariably look at Lincecum and say, "Dude, we're watching you on SportsCenter. How cool is that?"

"It blows me away," Lincecum says. "It's surreal. I hope I never get used to it."

The delivery, all 2.5 funky, forceful seconds of it, is a continuous, liquid motion that showcases Lincecum's athleticism 100 times a game. It's the creation of his father, who emphasized three fundamentals: 1) "tilt"—the turn of Tim's shoulders toward the third base dugout, forcing him to pick up the target out of the corner of his left eye; 2) "dangle"—the downward thrust of his right arm as he turns toward home plate; and 3) "reach"—the violent forward propulsion that creates a stride that exceeds his height and raises the real possibility that Lincecum might someday spike himself in the back of the head with his right foot.

Chris Lincecum is a Boeing parts-distribution employee who says his job could be done by "a monkey who can read." He's about the same size as Tim and, using the same unorthodox motion, was a talented pitcher himself, starring for nearby Green River Community College in the early 1970s. But his baseball career was diverted when he broke his back after a misstep sent him tumbling down a 20-foot embankment. He has definite opinions about pitching, and one of the first things college recruiters heard when they entered the Lincecum household was Chris saying, "Let's get one thing straight: You're not going to change him." To this day, Chris sits in front of the TV and charts each of Tim's starts—pitch, location, where the ball is put in play. "You know what it's for?" Chris says. "Therapy. I used to sit in the stands and give him hand signals, but I can't do that anymore. I have to do something."

At a time when ballplayers, especially pitchers, obsess over training regimens and slavishly follow routines with a compulsive joylessness, Lincecum subscribes to no solemn throwing program. He doesn't really stretch, never ices and swears he has never felt so much as the slightest twinge in his right arm. Nine teams passed on him in the 2006 draft, and six of them chose pitchers. Two of those guys, Colorado's Greg Reynolds and Pittsburgh's Brad Lincoln, have already undergone arm surgery. All of them were, in Lincecum's term, "specimens."

Giants scouts prepared Tidrow extensively before he watched Lincecum face Oregon State during his junior year at UW, and still the former big league reliever was completely unprepared for what he saw: "The arm speed, the hand speed, the length of his stride—I was blown away. There were a lot of things going on, but basically I liked all of them."

Lincecum is an interloper in a world of relative sameness, where pitchers are either tall and sturdy or ignored. Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux, whose undersized little brother, Greg, was a pretty good pitcher, says, "We've been seeing the first big wave of academy kids who've been taught by private coaches or in pay-to-play travel programs. They're all big and strong and light up the radar guns. They're talented, but they've been taught to do one thing: take instructions. You can tell them what to do and they do it, but they're not going to think it out on their own."

By contrast, Lincecum's most overlooked quality might be his adaptability. He's gone from relying on a strict mid-90s fastball, power-curve repertoire to incorporating a changeup (the grip took him three years to master) and a cutter. "He's learned that he doesn't have to go full-tilt boogie all the time," Tidrow says. "He's learned to make the ball do things, and he's learning how to do more with fewer pitches. It's scary, but he's only going to get better."

The conventional spoon-feeding of the young stud pitcher calls for strict pitch counts and early exits. Lincecum is no exception, but he hates it. At Washington, he sometimes relieved on Friday nights and started on Sundays. He once threw 157 pitches in a college game. He chafed—politely and silently—when Giants manager Bruce Bochy removed him from games last year after the count topped 110. "I don't want to be a guy who gets to 120 pitches and then says, 'Oh damn, now I can't pitch anymore,'" Lincecum says. "There are days when you're tired at 80 pitches and days when you're still pumping at 140 with adrenaline through the roof."

On this day at AT&T Park with Webster, he will throw long enough to break a sweat but not so long as to induce boredom. He will not count the throws or pace off the distance or otherwise impose any official structure on the proceedings. "I might throw for 10 or 15 minutes, depending on how strong I feel and how many balls I'm throwing away," he says. "Sometimes I throw the ball over the guy's head a few times and I'm like, I don't want to go get that. So I stop."

Asked how he feels at this juncture, roughly three weeks before he will report to spring training in Scottsdale, Lincecum appears to have never considered it. "Uh & good," he says. "I'm just kind of getting ready, but I don't want to be too ready by the time I get down there. I like to get there and work up to it. But yeah, I feel good."

His momentary hesitation can be excused. He has never felt anything but good. In fact, this brief session at the ballpark is the first time Lincecum has thrown in about a week, since he brought his glove to a Saturday barbecue that he and Webster hosted for a few friends in San Francisco's Crissy Field. He threw long toss that day, and while Webster and another friend were doing the double-crow hop just to reach him on two bounces, Lincecum was firing 250-foot heat-seekers that never got more than 15 feet off the ground.

There's nothing extraordinary about young men playing catch in a public park, but it didn't take long for this scene to become spectacle. The people walking their dogs, flying their kites, jogging—they started watching the throws and looking at the thrower. They'd take one look &
Nah, it can't be.

…then another. The body, the motion, the ball searing through the air...Has to be.

Tim Lincecum can't be mistaken for anyone else. There's nothing—and no one—quite like him.

[McCovey]

Looks like Timmy got a nice big raise. :awesomework.gif


Giants sign Lincecum to $650K contract

Associated Press
Thursday, February 26, 2009
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Tim Lincecum (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?playerId=28705) agreed to a $650,000, one-year contract with the San Francisco Giants (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/clubhouse?team=sfo) on Thursday. The 24-year-old Lincecum won the National League Cy Young Award in 2008, going 18-5 with a 2.62 ERA while striking out a major league-leading 265 batters in 227 innings. He ranked third in the major leagues in ERA and winning percentage, and was second in the NL in ERA and victories. Lincecum, who made his major league debut on May 6, 2007, is likely to be eligible for salary arbitration after the 2009 season.

[Bear]

Looks like Timmy got a nice big raise. :awesomework.gif

Chump change compared to what he will make in the future.:eek:

[SF Kid]

So he's eligible for salary arbitration after the 2009 season. Looks like the Giants better get out their check book. Kid is gonna be getting paid large! That's OK though assuming he has another very productive year. I'm tired of these pitchers who go 9-14 with a 5.12 ERA getting paid $5 million/yr. That is just out of bounds.

[TkleMstr52]

seems like quite a few pitchers Kid