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Thursday April.18, 2013

Lincecum had a better 2nd half in 2012 – with a 7-5 record and a 3.83 ERA. It was still a little too late to bestow Bochy with faith as the teams 1st or 2nd best starter heading into the 2012 playoffs. Lincecum pitched well out of the Bullpen in the World Series run.  While he is still 1 – 0 on the year, the former 2 time NL Cy Young Winner has yielded a National League high 12 Walks – while sporting a 5.63 ERA in 3 Games Started and 16 innings Pitched.  His WHIP is also a bloated 1.563.  These numbers are far above his Career ERA of 3.34 and his WHIP of 1.235.  He may be better off to pitch out of the Bullpen.

By Jon Schifferle ( Giants Correspondent – visit his own personal website here.) Follow @jonschifferle

Is Tim Lincecum as Bad as we all Think?

This most simple answer is no he isn’t.  While his 5.63 ERA through his first few starts this season aren’t exactly inspiring, there are some definite things that we can take away from his starts.

In his start against Colorado, his line of 6 IP, 4H, 6ER, 4BB, 7 SO, 1 HR is nothing to get excited about, but he did do a really good job of recovering form the bad inning to make it 6 Innings.

Another thing to look at was his line without that bad second inning, which to remind everyone, had a pretty costly error in it.  5IP, 2H, ER, BB, 6K’s.  Now that looks a lot more like the old Tim Lincecum, doesn’t it?

Tim Lincecum Highlights:

Lincecum will make $22 MIL in 2013. He is set to be a Free Agent in 2014. Being demoted to the 4th Starter to start the year, he will need to rectify his slow start. With a great season – he will make great $$ in the FA Market next year.

If not for that one Inning, Lincecum probably could have gone at least 7 Innings Pitched in that start, and had a pretty solid outing.

Another thing to note, as many already have, was how dominant Tim Lincecum was in the playoffs.

Tim Lincecum definitely still has nasty stuff.  It shows in his starts from time to time, and its one of the biggest reasons that his issues are so frustrating to watch.  It just always seems like he’s SO CLOSE!

And the truth is, he probably is relatively close.  He’s getting the Strikeouts.  You can’t Strikeout guys like he does without good stuff.  He just seems to have too inconsistent of a release point right now.  He also needs to learn how to stop a big inning from happening.

At this point, the Giants have a few options.  They could potentially move Tim Lincecum to the Bullpen.  While he has shown dominance out of the Bullpen, It may still not be the most beneficial options.

 They could also leave him in the rotation to try and solve his issues on the fly like they did last year, but the team is currently trying to compete, and you don’t want his poor performance interfering with that.

The best options I see is to give him 3 more starts.  This will allow him to quickly prove himself, or not prove himself, and not hurt the team TOO much in the process.  If he can’t succeed, then he should be sent to the Minors to work on his release point.

If and when he proves himself to be ready for the Major Leagues, he should be called back up.  If he doesn’t prove to be ready by mid season., then he should be called up around August or September to get ready to pitch in relief.

The biggest thing to remember is that he has shown improvement.  It may not be as much a we all want, but it is still improvement.  He was drastically worse than he should have been last season, and it takes a while to get back to the dominance he showed earlier in his career.

Lincecum was 10 – 15 during the 2012 season. He led the NL with 33 Games Started – but also in Losses and Earned Runs. His record before last season was 69 – 41 with an ERA just north of 3.00. Critics have often said that his pitching mechanics would not last in the Major Leagues. He may be better suited to be a Reliever – as his 2.55 ERA in 17.2 IP during the 2012 World Series run indicated. He loses his velocity off of his fastball in the second time around the lineup.

***The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of mlbreports.com or their partners***

A big thank-you goes out to Our ‘Giants  Correspondent’ Jon Schifferle for preparing today’s featured article. Jon is a college student that grew up in Northern California and he has been a Giants fan for as long as he can remember. 

Two of his greatest memories were going to Game 1 of the 2010 World Series, and Game 2 of the 2012 World Series.  he loves to watch prospects and the draft, and started his own blog called A Giant Perspective here.

Jon loves to write about all aspects of the game.   His dream is to eventually work in baseball in some capacity. Being a West Coast guy, he is able to watch all of the late games out there and have a vast knowledge of the AL and NL West especially.  Feel free to follow Jon on Twitter and talk about the game of baseball. Follow @jonschifferle

Jon is on the left and his brother is on the right.

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