The Phillies, once again looking like the much better team, took game 2 of the series by a score of 6-2. Guess what? We fell behind early. That's right, this season's recurring theme of generally crappy starting pitching once again reared it's ugly head. Tim Lincecum delivered a rather feeble 7 innings, yielding 9 hits and five runs. Nothing special there. I still have a lot of faith in our rotation, yet it looks like a steady flow of quality starts may be a thing of the past.
If you really needed another indication that Tim is a shadow of his former self, Chase Utley's performance tonight might qualify. Timmeh has owned Utley for years, something like 6 hits and 12 strike outs in 30 at bats. Tonight, he got three hits, including a big homer, in three chances. I know it is a small sample size, but we all know Tim's magic mojo is no more. He is actually looking very hittable. Nothing special. Heavy sigh.
Day game tomorrow! No time to think about it. Shake it off and let's play ball.
4 comments:
Kendrick sure made quick work of the Giants lineup. The Giants can make three outs in 10 pitches better than anyone!
Alas, I don't know what to say about Tim. I liked that he hung on and racked up some outs after that bad second inning, but he's giving up a lot of hard-hit balls. Seems like too many pitches in the hit-me zone. ELM has a post today saying "move him to the 'pen." Kind of extreme for May, perhaps. We'll see.
Giants have a six-game win streak, two four-game streaks, one three-game streak, and one two-game to account for all their 19 wins.
H. Schulman has a column in the Chron today that surmises that the problem is with the starting pitching. I'm not so sure. The starters seemed fine for six games in a row. Vogie pitched - better. Zito pitched well. Tim pitched well. Matt pitched great last time out. Now Madison and then Tim don't look so good. Whatever is happening, it is not clear. You are correct, last night Tim was very hittable. A number of those hits were on the first pitch. What's more, the Giants looked feeble at the plate. Kyle Kendrick has been on a roll lately, and Philly looks like it has some power. We kind of forgot about them in the last year or two, but they are still a good team. And speaking of good teams, we play Atlanta starting Thursday. Seems like we are about due for a day off.
Timmy has been a rock - 33 starts like clockwork. I just posted up my thoughts on my bloggy. I'd give Timmy about 7 more starts to show something and then I agree, time for the pen. 11 starts (4 more) is 1/3 the season. 16-17 starts (9-10) more is 1/2 the season. I don't think the Giants can afford more than half the season of Timmy being 2012-13 vintage with the rest of the starters not square yet.
He can't get hitters to chase out the zone anymore. He needs to face that fact. I don't think he has yet.
Utley's hr was on the first pitch to him. It was reported as a change up, like he was waiting for it. A good guess, or is Tim tipping pitches?
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