Normally this blog is all about football, fantasy football traditionally, but football in general as well. However as a life long baseball fan who lives & dies with the San Francisco Giants, I found this deep dive into the quality of Giants pitching phenom Tim Lincecum. Its called 'Anatomy of a player' written by the Josh Kalk of the Hard Ball Times. He looked at approximately 50% of all Lincecum's throws last season (over 1000 in total) to analyze the speed, quality and frequency of each of his three pitches.
His three pitches are a very good Fastball, a potentially devastating curveball and an improving change up. He apparently threw a slider in college (at the University of Washington) but he scraped that pitch for the change up in the pros. While I won't recreate everything Kalk wrote, I will post his final summary below.
While Lincecum is mostly known for his fastball, he does have very strong off-speed pitches. If he uses these pitches a little more often, he could move quickly from a very good pitcher to one of the best pitchers in the league. With the Giants going with some younger players, their defense could improve next year. That could make Lincecum's numbers look even better.
While I think everybody who pays attention knows how much upside potential Lincecum has, I wrote this precisely b/c I would hate to see the Giants deal away a potential #1 starting pitcher for an above average power hitter more advanced in their development. The fact remains MLB is all about pitching, teams that have it are competitive, ones that don't struggle (look no further than baseball's strongest lineup last year - the $200 million payroll NY Yankees - they made the playoffs on the strength of their lineup but they were bounced quickly b/c they didn't have the pitching) to win. The giants have a tremendous opportunity to develop a top 5 pitching staff with Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Noah Lowry and Barry Zito all locked up for the next 4+ years. They simply need to be patient in developing position players and make solid pick ups in the free agent market (maybe Japanese import OF Kosuke Fukudome) without mortgaging an asset that is much harder to come by (dominant starting pitching).
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