BaseballEvolution.com - Mailbag: Tim Lincecum

Mailbag: Tim Lincecum
by Richard Van Zandt, BaseballEvolution.com
October 25, 2006

Rog:

I greatly enjoyed your article on Timmy Lincecum. I too would have liked to have been at that first San Jose start, but before I knew of it, I had committed to refereeing basketball. I did later have the pleasure of watching one of his regular-season starts at San Jose, one in Stockton and his playoff start. To be honest, I was sold on him the instant I saw him long-tossing on that calleaguer.com video, and he was even more impressive in person. The question I wanted to ask you was about Timmy's pitches. It appeared to me that Timmy is going almost exclusively with his fastball and the waterfall curve. Regarding the fastball, Timmy has consistently been between 94 and 97 with it, but I haven't got the sense of movement we have seen from Matt Cain. Matt seems to be able to overpower hitters with the high, hard one. While I have seen Timmy do so as well, the first time I saw him pitch he gave up a tremendous home run on his last pitch of the game. He threw it at 94, so he didn't appear to be tiring (and I have read that his 146th and final pitch in his two-hit, 18-strikeout shutout of UCLA was clocked at 95 mph), but the batter turned an hit a rising liner that was a no-doubter between the line and straight away left. While Cain might even benefit when his fastball is up, my feeling is that Timmy is at his best when he keeps his pitches down. I do like Timmy's curve better than Matt's. While Matt's curve is more 10-to-4, Timmy's is more like 11-to-5, which move of the break being sharply downward. I think the curve is Timmy's best pitch, and he seems to throw it about 30% of the time. When he keeps it down, it's darn hard to hit, and he gets a lot of swing-throughs when it breaks into the dirt, as well. While scouts have been concerned about Timmy's durability and ability to avoid injury, I actually view both as strengths. Timmy has apparently never missed a start or even had a sore arm. The day after his 146-pitch outing against UCLA, he played long toss from foul pole to foul pole. Timmy benefits from his strong push off, from his elongated stride, from using -- as he says -- everything from his toes to his ears, from his flexibility training and from a daily throwing program somewhat like the Atlanta Braves used under Leo Mazzone. Timmy's mechanics apparently go back as far as his grandfather, and his father refined them by modeling them after Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller. It appears to me that Timmy has less chance of injury than the average pitcher. The question I wanted to ask you was about his pitches. I realize you didn't see them all, but you probably learned a fair amount about them from Chris. Basically you listed six pitches. First, I wanted to ask you about Timmy's curve. I've seen only the waterfall curve, but you mentioned three types. Tell me about the curve that breaks twice. Is that physically possible? And does his third curve have more of a sideways break? Did you see Timmy's slider? I may have seen a couple of them the first time I saw him pitch, but he didn't seem to be throwing the pitch thereafter. I also thought I saw a couple of changes the first time, but felt he was going only with his fastball and curve the last two times I saw him throw (during which time he yielded only a single run in a dozen innings). It is also possible that what I viewed as a change might have been the splitter you described. I believe I do recall a bit of backward movement, although two months later I'm not certain. Did you see his split? Finally the knuckler. Do you know how long or how often Timmy throws it? You mentioned the Giants haven't allowed him to use it. Did Chris feel it was a viable pitch that would actually help Timmy? How is Timmy's command of these six pitches? To me, his control was his only weakness, although he hasn't walked nearly as many as a pro as he did in college, while actually increasing his K rate. One guy I read believed that Timmy should throw ONLY the fastball and curve, as he felt was the case with Randy Johnson. (Who is only a foot taller :) What opinion did you come away with? Are some of Timmy's pitches redundant -- or would he be a total nightmare if he used all six of them? I loved your nickname of "The Future" for Timmy. That is my feeling, as well. Would you agree that Timmy and Matt Cain have a very realistic shot at being the Giants best pair of pitchers since Marichal and Perry? Do you think Timmy will throw even harder as he fills out? When I first saw him on the mound, he looked like a high school freshman playing with men. Once he began facing batters, though, it was they who resembled teenagers. Am I right that Timmy doesn't have exceptional movement on his heater, or did you see it differently? What else did you learn from Chris? I have read that Chris himself was clocked at 88 -- at the age of 55! I'm thinking Timmy could be Livan Hernandez 33 years from now! :) Anyway, I would love to hear the insights you gained about Timmy from his dad or from your own observations. I must say he impressed the heck out of me. Against Stockton he threw only five innings (73 pitches), walked the first two hitters in the second inning and went to a 3-1 count on the third before regaining his feel, and gave up only a scratch hit when the shortstop couldn't handle a backhander Omar Vizquel would have eaten up. The hardest hit ball was actually a semi-looping liner hit fairly deep into the right field seats when the hitter was late getting around on the heater. Timmy threw 94 pitches while limiting Visalia to one run on four or five hits in seven innings in the playoff opener. The 94th pitch was thrown at 96 mph and resulted in a late-swinging soft fly ball to right. Oh, one more question I just thought of. Timmy could have been called up to pitch the game that Schmidty missed on September 15th. He would have pitched on the 14th for San Jose if the junior Giants hadn't been eliminated on the 13th. That game turned out to be the turning point in the Giants season, as they went only something like 3-13 the rest of the way. Brian Sabean said that the Giants starters just seemed to spiral downward after that start (which was made by Brad Hennessey). But Brian said at the time that he wasn't bringing up Timmy because he had thrown the equivalent number of pitches of about 35 starts. I know the pitch count from about a third of Timmy's 26 starts on the season (between the University of Washington, Salem-Keizer and San Jose). Timmy also pitched 5 1/3 innings in five relief appearances at UW. It appears to me that Timmy threw about 2625 pitches, give or take maybe 50 to 100. In Matt Cain's 31 starts, he threw 3286 pitches, as well as 20 more in the one relief appearance he made (and didn't that skipping of the one start really turn his season around?). If Matt had made 35 starts, he would have exceeded 3700 pitches, which is almost certainly more than a thousand more than Timmy threw. Was Brian unaware of how many pitches Timmy had actually thrown? Was he merely being especially cautious with Timmy? And if the latter, why did he find it necessary to shall we say greatly stretch the truth? Why not say that Timmy had thrown as many as 146 pitches in a single game this season and 165 in a game in 2005 and that the Giants wanted to be especially careful with him, since he was a highly-valued property? And was he, like many of the nine teams who drafted ahead of the Giants, being prejudicial to Timmy's size? By the way, I looked at the boxes from the games Timmy pitched at the University of Washington this year. While that 165 pitches was a huge load in 2005 (and I believe the third- or fourth-highest recorded pitch count in the NCAA that year) and the 146 pitches against UCLA were a lot, based on the innings he pitched and the rest between starts and relief appearances, Timmy didn't look to be worked too hard in 2006. He had one start on three days' rest, and all his others came on the normal four days' rest or even more. The 146 pitches didn't appear to be his average. I don't remember coming across any other starts where he threw over 125 pitches. The five relief appearances he made were between 1/3 of an inning and two innings, and came at comfortable intervals between his starts. Essentially Timmy was used as a reliever when there was going to be a long time between his starts. He wasn't used nearly as hard as starters were back in the fifties and sixties. They sometimes pitched relief on the day they would throw between starts. Timmy's relief appearances seemed to be more tactical uses of him so that he wouldn't get rusty. Timmy threw only 164 innings between his three stops. And he threw them over a seven-month period beginning with his first start on February 10th and ending with his playoff start on September 9th. I have no problem with the Giants being extra careful with Timmy, since he is indeed The Future, but I wish Brian had been more honest and/or aware. And since Brian himself has indicated that September 15th was the turning point for the season, I will always wonder.

Richard:

First of all, I want to say…wow. That’s about as impressive a scouting report on Tim Lincecum as you can find. I dare say you know him a tad better than I do to be sure. I’m not sure what I could tell you that you wouldn’t already know but I’ll do the best I can to try to answer your many questions. Before I do that I do also want to thank you for taking the time to read my piece and to take quite a bit of time to write. It’s always great to hear other people’s opinions. Now, you ask me about his many pitches. I must admit that I didn’t see much of them. As it was his first start with San Jose and just his third professional start, he was obviously limited in what he was allowed to throw. I did not see a slider or more than one kind of curve nor do I believe that I saw a splitter. He did throw a couple of change ups (they broke down and in to right handers) but otherwise it was just the straight curve and fastball and he was on a strict pitch count, getting lifted after 2 2/3 because of it. I did not sense that he was tiring then and Chris indeed seemed to feel that Tim needed to throw more, not less. The Giants are indeed being very cautious with their prized prospect and I don’t blame them. They paid him a lot of money ($2 million) and want to make sure they get their money’s worth and then some (remember they even gave him his own personal catcher in Yamid Haad). He has thrown a lot of innings in his life already – breaking the U of W school record for innings pitched in just three years – and I’m not sure it would have been worth it to bring him up for that game against the Rockies. In fact, by that point the team had already stated that they would not be bringing him up and I agreed with it. I just didn’t think the risk outweighed the reward. And besides, as I detailed in my September 28 Daily News & Notes, that meltdown (which you’re right about being clearly traced back to that ill fated game in Colorado) was far greater than that just that one contest. I can’t imagine one start from Lincecum in mid-September would have prevented that disaster. And about Cain, when you consider the number of pitches he throws, you should consider that of the 112 pitchers in MLB in 2006 who threw 2,000 or more pitches, Cain (who was 23rd overall in total pitches with 3,307) had the fifth highest average ratio of pitches per plate appearance (4.04) and he had the 8th highest average number of pitches per inning (17.34) so I wouldn’t consider him a fair barometer on how many pitches an average pitcher should throw. The fact that Matt throws a lot of pitches in fact is a concern in that he hinders his own ability to go deep into games. Another concern of course is in fact one of the main causes of the high number of pitches he throws which would be the high number of walks issued – 4.06 per 9 innings when IBB are subtracted out – 7th overall in MLB). But as far as endurance goes with Matt, it’s worth noting that he threw more innings in 2005 (192.0) than he did this year (190.2). But I’m not sure I agree that Sabean was being dishonest or untruthful with the media or the fans in the handling of Lincecum. Nevertheless, a better comparison would be with Noah Lowry who threw 2,621 pitches in 159.1 innings over 27 starts (32nd overall with 3.80 pitches/batter faced and 31st with 16.45 P/IP) as compared to the 2,625 and 164 you state for Lincecum; so yes, he didn’t really throw 35 innings worth of starts but he did pitch plenty for a young man at his age and with his experience and again, I didn’t get the feeling Sabean was being dishonest. As for movement, well that’s hard for me to judge insofar as the difference between Cain and Lincecum. I felt I saw pretty good movement when I saw Tim pitch and I quite enjoyed the nice view I had at cozy Municipal Stadium. I’ve never been anywhere close to that spot at Willie Mays Field when Cain has pitched so really, the best view I can say I’ve had of him pitching is on television which doesn’t give you nearly the view and vision of movement I had for Lincecum’s start. But again, I thought he had good movement on all three of his pitches. I was most impressed with his control though as he was not throwing his full arsenal of pitches, that might have played a part in increasing his effectiveness. I wouldn’t be surprised if they only had him throwing what they felt he had the best command with. I definitely agree that I like Lincecum’s curve better than Cain’s. If there is a knock on Cain, it’s been his curve though that pitch improved greatly as the year went on. I like Cain quite a lot and think he’s going to be quite a pitcher but I believe that Lincecum will be even better. I like his overall makeup stuff better. Matt needs to further develop his curve and change up. The fastball obviously is nasty. Lincecum already seems to have a lot more. The curve impressed me as did the change. I did not see him throw harder than 97 but he’s been clocked at over 100 so do I think he’ll throw harder? Well I don’t know that he can. I think he’s already smart enough though to know he doesn’t always have to throw that hard. From what I’ve heard of Chris Lincecum, Tim’s definitely had some good instruction on how to pitch growing up. Nevertheless, I do look forward to seeing him fill out. I think that will give him even greater endurance and if he does end up throwing harder, well, so much the better. Do I think he needs to throw all of his pitches? Should he throw just the curve and fastball? No and no. Some believe he should be a closer (especially in light of the ’06 performance of Armando Benitez). If that were the case then yes, by all means stick to the two pitches but I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s too good a pitcher to limit to an inning a night. No, I would have him limit what he throws to what he’s most effective with, but he’s definitely a starting pitcher and needs more than just two pitches. I like the change and I think the splitter would also work well with the fastball. The slider could be a pitch that if he doesn’t have good command of it, he should put to the side as it could be a bit redundant with his different curve balls and the knuckler might be one that he should stick in his bag of tricks for occasional use at a later time after he’s established himself. As for the curve that breaks twice, I didn’t see him throw it but I do believe I’ve seen a pitcher once upon a time who had a bit of a double movement but I can’t recall who. What I do recall is that it kinda dipped a little bit twice. More of a subtle movement I believe. I must admit I didn’t talk too extensively with Chris as one – I didn’t want to bother him and two – he disappeared as soon as Tim left the game, which I mentioned was early. As for Lincecum’s durability, though I think the Giants played it right by playing it safe with him this year, I think he’s going to be fine physically. I think his arm has been built up judiciously under his father’s eye and as you mentioned, his mechanics have been well honed. I think scouts just don’t like short pitchers. Marichal and Perry? Wouldn’t that be nice. I hate to loft such hefty praise on either Cain or Lincecum at such young ages but then again… Thanks again for writing in, Rog, and I hope to hear from you again.

Disagree with something? Got something to add? Wanna bring up something totally new? Richard resides in San Francisco, CA, and can be reached at richard@baseballevolution.com.