Finding the Freak

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You would have to think after San Francisco Giants ace Tim Lincecum’s first 2 starts this season someone must of ran an ad in the newspaper: LOST – THE FREAK. REWARD, call Giant’s pitching coach Dave Righetti. After all, Lincecum stood with a 7.56 era in only 8.1 innings pitched through 2 games. That’s not a very good start for the 2008 NL CY Young winner.

“Sometimes you can think things into the ground,” Lincecum told reporters.

“That makes it worse.

Sometimes you can map it out until it’s resolved.

I’m trying not to do that right now.”

Lincecum did come up with a Hall of Fame malaprop,

saying that he was trying to take his outing …..

“with a grain of rice.”

Say what?

“Rice, salt, whatever…

I’m half-Asian,” Lincecum said.

Fair enough.

Senior Baseball Instinct contributor Tom Belmont notes - After his second start of the season Timmy sat down with pitching coach Dave Righetti and took a look at what made Lincecum so dominant in 2008. What Lincecum found in the video was that his upper and lower half were not in sequence this year the way they were in 2008. Lincecum explained that in his mechanics his upper and lower half work on different axis which create the max torque that allow him to push his fastball into the upper 90s. Lincecum does have out of the ordinary mechanics and by watching him its easy to understand how one part of the windup being off could throw the entire motion out of whack.

From watching his 2008 video and comparing his first two starts of 2009, a small variation is his foot plant is evident. In 2008 Lincecum was driving hard off of the rubber, almost jumping into the foot plant as his upper half came back through the motion and brought his arm through the drive-plane. In 2009, Lincecum hasn’t been getting the same drive off of the rubber and its forced him to overcompensate by pulling his arm through the plane instead which is keeping the ball up in the zone.

Lincecum and Righetti seem have stumbled onto the problem and Saturday afternoon Lincecum came back out with the stuff that made his 2008 campaign Cy Young caliber. He was able to keep the ball down in the zone and his follow through at the end of his motion was much more pronounced and the entire delivery just seemed much more fluid. Lincecum was able to hold the Diamondbacks offense scoreless through 8 innings while striking out a season high 13. This is the 10th time in Lincecum’s short career that he’s reached double digit K’s and that bodes well for the Giants. Unfortunately Lincecum and the Giants ran into the Machine that is Doug Davis and Lincecum had to settle for a no decision today.

If today is any indication that Lincecum has found the kink in mechanics and has corrected it than the rest of the NL is once again in trouble because the Freak is back.

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