Joe Sheehan thinks Tim Lincecum is one man team:
…. Tim Lincecum is to the 2008 Giants what Steve Carlton was to those 1972 Phillies—an ace among deuces, a man among men, the only thing keeping the team out of Triple-A.
So far this season, the Giants are 5-0 when he pitches, 6-13 (now 6-15) when he doesn’t. They’re +9 in run differential and have allowed just seven runs in the five games (1.4 R/G) in which Lincecum pitched. They’re -41 and have allowed 99 runs (5.3 R/G) in the other 19.
Lincecum is the entire reason for this. Supported by 12 runs in his four starts, he’s held the opposition to just three runs in those outings. Throw in a relief appearance in his season debut (an odd game in which Bochy initially held Lincecum out due to the threat of a rain delay), and he’s allowed just four runs in 29 1/3 innings, striking out 34 men. He has yet to allow a home run and has given up just five doubles among his 27 hits allowed. Yes, 27.
That’s because, despite a great strikeout rate, the Giants’ porous defense rates 27th in the NL in Defensive Efficiency, and that has helped Lincecum allow a .380 batting average on balls in play.
His numbers could and should be better if not for the Giants’ inability to prevent singles. The return of Omar Vizquel won’t help all that much; he’s not that much better with the glove then Brian Bocock is, and the Giants’ real problem is on the right side of the infield, where they have just one marginally average defender on the days that Rich Aurilia plays first base.
Tim Lincecum is 4-0, 1.23 despite getting virtually no support from his offense or his defense. He’s the closest thing to a one-man team in MLB—his combined pitching and hitting VORP is 15.3, and the rest of the Giants have combined for 10.7.
Barry Zito is the anti-Lincecum. The team is 0-6 when he pitches, he has allowed an astounding 41 hits (7 doubles, 2 triples and 4 home runs!) and 15 walks while lasting only 28.2 innings, (4 2/3 innings per start), which, of course, is killing the bullpen. On ESPN’s stats page, he is ranked dead last among qualifying pitchers, in virtually every category. He turns everyone into an MVP candidate, with hitters running out a .336/.397/.525 .922 OPS line. The team is 11-9 without him, and the team ERA drops by more than half a run, to 3.95, when you subtract his “contribution.”
The time has come to do something about it. Send him down, put him in the bullpen, put him on the DL, whatever. You cannot keep running him out there, HE HAS NOTHING. No control, no fastball, nothing, and he is killing, KILLING the team.
Hat tip to El
UPDATE: Wow. Zito’s gonna be demoted to the bullpen, which is, essentially, an admission of a failure of the highest level imaginable. Zito’s problems needs to be corrected this season, or we’re pretty much gonna see the end of Brian Sabean. There’s no way Sabean saves his job if Zito is what he looks like now, a complete, total, catastrophic bust.
unback to Lincecum (sorry)….
saw a stat somewhere yesterday that said that Zito had thrown the second most pitches in MLB over whatever period it said – 5 years I think. And, the extra scary thing is he was only 40 pitches (out of 22,000) behind the leader, Livan Hernandez. Hernandez is a freak-of-nature throwback, and so this is bad indeed.
“In these modern times you would think a GM would know better…..”
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Back to Lincecum – he got SCREWED last night by the home plate umpire. How on earth do you call a time out (both by yelling it and raising your arms) and THEN call a balk that you caused? Ridiculous…
Too bad Zito found New York so “arrogant.” If only they hadn’t exhibited such “negative waves” (see: Kelly’s Heroes) around is aura, he’d be a Mets horror show right now. Ahh…let’s revise history with trades of Jason Schmidt when he had value, no Felipe Alou or Bonehead, Vlad and/or Beltran…ahh, never mind.
Here’s an ice-cold slump buster for Barry. Hopefully it helps!
[...] John wrote an interesting post today on …. WowHere’s a quick excerptJoe Sheehan thinks Tim Lincecum is one man team: …. Tim Lincecum is to the 2008 Giants what Steve Carlton was to those 1972 Phillies—an ace among deuces, a man among men, the only thing keeping the team out of Triple-A. … [...]
If Zito doesn’t turn things around this season, he could turn out to be the savior of the Giants. Sure, his bloated contract will be a burden for years, but SOMEONE’S head will have to roll and that someone will be Brian Sabean (ironically, for a decision he probably didn’t pull the trigger on himself). A competent GM can do more with a $70 million pay-roll (that’s the future pay-roll minus Zito’s take) than Sabean can wiht $100 million, so it’s still a good deal.
What makes you think Peter Magowan would hire a competent GM to replace Brian?
He couldn’t do any worse… so the odds are in our favor.
do you really want Sabean to try?
Huh? No, I want some other GM to try… no matter what, he can’t do as poorly as Sabean.
An “ace among deuces”….oy. The english language is dying….
Well, the solution is obvious – since pitch counts are unimportant, let Lincecum pitch all 9 innings of all remaining games. What? Old Hoss Radbourne could do it, these newfangled soft players can’t?
Zito (as it looks at present) is a disaster. I don’t think the hopeful options as posited above are possible. He has to get hurt playing baseball while under contract for the Giants to collect anything.
As mia implies, I do fear for the young pitchers…I can totally see Matt Cain going Shawn Estes on us as he pitches his 5th straight losing no-hitter. Might as well bring Dusty Baker and burn ‘em all out so the Giants can win 75 games and get on with our lives.
As far as attendance goes…it’s gonna go. Those turnstiles will be spinning less and less – all due respect to less fanatical fans, but when the park gets too familiar and the giants are no longer fashionable….what was it, the early 80s when the giants were drawing 300,000 a season? I know that won’t happen again, but a 50% drop…someone’s going to start caring.
I don’t know how moving him to the pen is going to help matters honestly… Zito’s worst innings tended to be the first. Coming out of the pen is just going to add gasline to the fire, it will give new meaning to “gascan”. They should shut him down all together.
I really think something structurally is wrong. He’s incrementially been losing velocity on his fastball, but he was throwing the high 80′s last year, yes? When he first came in the league he would hit could rev it up and hit 91-92.
It’s hard for me to say this, but I really hope he can figure it out (and I know you’ve heard this a 1,000 times) that’s an awfully big contract for a long reliever.
As for the insurance question, I’m pretty sure if the contract was insured (and I bet it wasn’t because mia+ is correct in that the premiums are prohibitive and which contract qualify is also quite narrow) only about 40-50% would be covered. Of course that’s better than being on the hook for all of it… but I’m sure it’s a long shot.
Zito sent to the bullpen…but the GM that signed him to that ridiculous deal keeps his job. Yeah, that seems fair.
some get zito some hgh on the double, worst case scenario he fails a test and we can pursue a way to cut him, best case, he throws a 90 mile an hour pitch once this season
they will be skipping at least one of zito’s starts
not sure its gonna help….he is done
how they didnt see this is beyond me
and i think some props need to be given to sanchez, who has proven what most of us knew….let the kid develop that 3rd pitch, and he would become a solid starter
Yup. From the first time I saw him pitch against the Rockies. It was one of those Jamie Wright games (another great Sabean signing) where he gave up like 6 runs in 3 plus innings. Corriea, Sanchez, and Hennessey held them scoreless the rest of the way. Sanchez didn’t even have an ERA until his 15th game. And the Giants kept jerking him around until this season…so far. He only has 131 career strikeouts in 120 innings and 62 walks. Very respectable k/bb ratio particularly for a 25 year old.
Good call. He and Lincecum are pretty special.
The thing a lot of people are missing is: THEY CAN’T CUT HIM! He has $112 million guaranteed… it’s not like football where all you lose is the signing bonus if you cut a guy, unfortunately. The contract will haunt the Giants for nearly a decade… unless there’s a turn around, Zito’s legend will be, quite literally, for signing the worst contract in sports history.
On a follow-up note: there is one possible savior I thought of, but I’m not sure if it’s even realistic. I know that insurance plays a large role in sports organizations… is there any way some sort of insurance claim regarding Zito’s contract could save the franchise if they ultimately do have to stop him from playing on the field? I guess at the very least some sort of tax rebate for massive depreciation?
Well, I’m not current on the latest. These disability policies used to be underwritten by Lloyds of London, but the premiums became prohibitive, so there may or may not be coverage involved here. Drayton MacLane, if you may recall tried to invoke a disability claim on Jeff Bagwell and ordered him out of Spring Training. I’m not sure how it was resolved, as I lost interest in the squabble of who was going to pay Bags his 10 million…the Astros or Lloyds.
But the bigger problem created by keeping Zito in the rotation is the damage he inflicts on the bullpen. The Reds series illustrated it perfectly. The night before the bullpen had to pull 8+ innings after Correa went out with an oblique–formerly known as pulled ribs. With Zito, it is almost guaranteed the pen is going to get into the game by the 5th inning at the latest. The bullpen will be ruined (again) by July at the current rate with Zito still in there.
Instead of baseball decisions which should have been made earlier, the Giants are making everything worse. On the field. On their own pitching staff. With the fans. And none of this even addresses the ineptitude that is the so-called offense. To expect Lincecum, Sanchez and Cain to consecutively hold opponents to under 2 runs is not rational. This team, in a word, is: Fucked. The only people who can unfuck it are Magowan and Sabean, and they have shown nothing but contempt for those who criticize or question their methods. As long as he can sell garlic fries, flaccid dogs, flat beer and overpriced tickets and parking by the $millions, he isn’t going to change. As long as he rakes in the cash, that is all the vindication he needs for his Board of Directors.
There is no reason to think that these creeps care one whit about Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Bengie Molina or any other player for that matter as long as the suckers keep plowing through the turnstiles. The best hitter in the game is sitting at home. The Giants desperately need hitting to even compete in games. Yet Barry Zito gets trotted out everyday.
To be fair, the beer selection is pretty good (Anchor Steam) and it’s never flat.
The thing with Zito is this. Its his contract. Not the fact he is a shitty pitcher with little or no chance of reversing a several year downward trend. Magowan signed him to be the great white hope. He used 2007 as a crossover season for 2 reasons.
1. Bonds would break the record and he would host the All-Star game, hopefully with Zito as the starting pitcher.
2. Acclimate the fans to the new “speedier, younger, faster, grittier, pitching and defense of “Zito Ball”.
A complete bust on all accounts. Even the Wall Street Journal has a few choice words on the absence of Bonds and its effect on fans.
Bottom line is Magowan is who we said he was. A micromanaging tool with a big ego who doesn’t know half as much about baseball, about fans, and mainly about players as he thinks he does.
Magowan won’t dump Zito. It would be an admission of everything he has done wrong. They may skip Zito a start; but nothing major will be done until after the season at all.
I have no confidence in anything this franchise does anymore. Tim Lincecum. And he hasn’t even produced a full season yet. This franchise resembles more and more Peter Angelos’ Orioles in the post-Camden Yards era.
Seriously though…what are our options with Zito? I’d love to hear more.
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They need to pull a Pittsburgh Pirates and just release him. He’s only going to get worse. The guy is a headcase and has never had good command of the plate, which means that with his low 80s velocity he won’t be able to be effect. We saw it with Reuter, once he started losing decent command of outside pitches he was done. Guys like Maddux, Moyer, Glavine etc remain successful because they can throw strikes. That’s all there is to it. Zito has never been THAT great at doing that anyway and now with his diminished velocity and all his other problems there really is no way back.