My Mom and Dad did a great job of teaching me a true American value: the love of Baseball. Each of them had a great personal history with long standing franchises. I always envied their tales of incredible pitchers that they witnessed: Bob Feller for my mother and Carl Hubbell for my father. Everytime I got excited by The Count, or Bill Swift, or Jason Schmidt (you get the idea) they would just smirk and tell me about some no-hitter or 16 strikeout performance or 4 consecutive complete game streak (you get the idea) and I would be put in my place. I'm too young for Juan Marichal, so I really didn't have any "ammo" to fight back with. Well, it looks like those days are over...
Tim Lincecum continues his journey into Giants history with his third complete game in the last four starts, two of them shutouts. Tonight he went the distance giving up a weak single and a double (to Pujols), NO WALKS and eight strike outs. All that in 95 pitches! These last couple CG's are not at all like the ones last year. Those were brutal 130+ affairs; this year's are efficient and economical. Hell, we scored 10 runs but the game was still only 2 hours long!! Oh yeah, just in case you want even more from Lincecum, he singled, successfully sacrificed, and made an excellent defensive play. Sounds like old time baseball to me.
I'm telling you, something else has clicked in place for Tim and he has taken it to a new level. Every time he takes the mound it feels like history is taking place. I think I say this every post: We are so lucky to be along for the ride.
I think I'm going to call my Mom tomorrow. Maybe we can talk some baseball now.
14 comments:
Another quick thought (shockingly un-Tim related):
This team of ours can field. We have a very good defense and I'm not exactly sure why. Ishikawa and Winn, maybe Rowand, are good, but who else? Is Pablo really a good glove too? Something like 1 error in the last ten games for the entire team, 4th best fielding %.
That's a sign of a good team. I don't get it...are we one?
Has someone before me said Tim could be Mitch Kramer in Dazed and Confused?
Hey alouredux, thanks for stopping by!
I admit that I had to look it up (although I did see the movie) and you are dead right! Especially the hair. Yikes! You are definitely the first to mention it...humm, sounds like a new game, match the players to movie characters. Think of the possibilities with Johnson!
Marichal is an interesting case. His three best seasons in terms of ERA+ were 1965 (169), 1969 (168), and 1966 (167).
Tim's ERA+ was 167 last year. It is currently 184. The career leader for starters is Pedro Martinez (154). Lifetime, Marichal is tied for 79th with guys like Mike Mussina and Dan Haren (123). The list includes relievers. No surprise that Mariano Rivera is 1st (197).
That is only one indicator, of course. In terms of career WAR, Marichal is 21st, behind John Smoltz and ahead of Jim Palmer. Clemens is number one by far at 128.3, about twice the value of those three I mentioned who are in the mid-60s.
Tim Lincecum already is "worth" 15.5 WAR. Pretty amazing.
For more Lincecum-love, check out this analysis.
All I really meant to say, of course, that Lincecum is truly great. But we knew that. Read the piece at driveline mechanics. The guy who wrote it is a Cardinals/Pujols fan, and he just gushes over our boy and does some Chris/BCB-like work with very cool graphs and charts.
Highly recommended.
Oh, and how about Joe Don Baker ("Walking Tall") and Matt Cain?
We score 10 runs and all we talk about is our pitcher? Ho-hum, another 2 hits from Nate to raise his average to .322; three hits each from Ishikawa and Renteria, no big deal. Did you see that homer Uribe hit? A monster, up into Big Mac Land.
How about Jim Streeter & Matt Cain??? I've wondered about that for a few years now ... have you ever seen them in the same place? Did Cain make any starts, while we were with Jim in Oaxaca last year?
Ix-nay on the ovie stars-may. If anything, they should be re-naming movie stars after baseball players. I was glad to have been able to watch a good part of last night's game on tv, and that makes the stats really, really uninteresting. One good thing about tv (and if you know me, you would know how rare it is when I can find good in the evil box) is that, through camera angles and replays, you can see pitchers perform really well. And last night, it was a treat.
Is this a first? All 5 RMC contributers chiming in on the same day?
Woo Hoo!
Fielding - Pablo Sandoval has committed only 2 errors in 46 third base starts. I think that is pretty good for a guy who supposedly learned the position this spring. I think that is pretty darn good. (He is credited with 3 at first in 18 games.) Fred Lewis' error in left on Sunday was scored a hit (it bounced out of the pocket of his glove), but I'd have to say that we are a good fielding team. Shierholtz has been excellent when he has played, Winn is generally excellent, Rowand passable. We have gotten good play from Renteria (5 errors, .980 fielding percentage). When we put Torres, Winn and Shierholtz in the outfield, or even with Rowand, I would have to say that we are probably as good of a defensive outfield as exists today. With Ishikawa and Sandoval solid at the corners, as long as we don't have Velez (remember him?) at 2nd, we are solid in the infield. Go look up your exotic stats if you want.
Very impressive, especially so early in the morn.
Since I have you all here: RMC is now available through Facebook! I set this up because I saw that Chris at BayCityBall had it. Always imitate your superiors. Here is the link to RMC on Facebook
If you use Facebook you can get automatic updates of this blog...and others like BCB and Mark's other ones. Of course, I have to get MOC to sign up. Once on board, become a "follower". I hope this makes it easier for new friends to join in. If you don't do the Facebook thing, nothing changes.
Hitting has been great of late. Ishikawa has become a contributor after being death at the plate, Schierholtz has hit, in the words of Krukow, like he belongs in the major leagues, and Molina got some good hits last night, as though he was on a streak. With our pitching, if we can get more than one guy hitting at the same time, we can be pretty good.
One thing leaves me wondering after watching tv, though. How can Nate Shierholtz get his beard to look 3 days old every day? Is there some sort of beard clipper that can do this?
Everybody (including me) said that the Giants were a no offense team based on what our young players had done previously. It would be interesting to go back and see what the projections said after the season. I'm really curious as to who would have exceeded expectations.
More Lincecum love.
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