Giants face a tough call on Lincecum
Posted: Friday, August 08, 2008 10:12 AM
Something to watch over the final six weeks of the season is how the Giants use Tim Lincecum.
Fascinating scenario: About two weeks ago Lincecum and Brandon Webb dueled through seven innings. The Giants led 3-2 behind Lincecum’s 13 strikeouts. Every account reported that the Giants second-year starter was thoroughly dominant. Then, the Giants lifted him. They didn’t let him go out to start the eighth. Predictably for a team in a severe struggle, the Giants’ bullpen surrendered the lead and the game.
What shocked me was the outrage from a segment of Giants fans. A colleague told me about booing at the game and hosting a radio show in San Francisco two days later, I was stunned at the level of passionate unrest from fans that were in attendance.
It’s easy for me to be detached: I wasn’t there and didn’t pay for a ticket. My first response was two words: Mark Prior. Remember what happened to him. In fact, I found the brilliant New York Times piece by Buzz Bissinger on Kerry Wood from last summer in which research was documented about the danger of pitching while fatigued.
Tom Verducci’s SI piece on Lincecum from July reinforced that belief. Every piece of research available suggests that continued pitching while fatigued is the biggest single contributor to injury.
So I felt safe in the notion that the Giants, a team stumbling through this season, should proceed with extreme caution in the care and handling of their best asset.
But no said the fans. If anything, went one argument, this game was the highlight of a lost season and the Giants should have allowed Lincecum to continue on a special night. There was no evidence of fatigue. He was dominant in the seventh, the last inning he would pitch. The fans deserved to see him at least start the eighth, an argument that seems quite reasonable.
The passion of these arguments made an impression. The point has been made here often that starters are babied. But a wise friend commented, “you can’t turn life into 1965.” To change starting pitching, an organization would have to commit at its entry levels of minor league baseball to stretch out pitchers, a process that would take years to be realized on the big league level. We are beyond that hope so we must accept and work with the current structure.
Which means I keep going back to Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. Four years ago they were the best pitching trio in the game. Young and talented, they were the envy of all teams.
Four years later Hudson faces Tommy John surgery, Mulder has completely broken down and Zito is a shell of his young self. That’s the fragility of starting pitching so a team like San Francisco -- committed to rebuilding around a trio of starters in Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez -- must be careful with their prime assets.
Already it is obvious that Sanchez, in his first year as a full-time starter, is out of gas. Cain has established his durability and that was the question that dogged Lincecum out of college and led to his fall to the 10th spot in the 2006 draft. He wants to answer this year by working 200 innings. The Giants have a serious decision ahead in monitoring his work as he approaches that number.
