eastbaybaseball

   After honoring all of the past Giants greats on  that came and gone in the Giants Organization on the Wall of Fame and honoring the top minor league players within the organization (Madison Bumgarner: Minor League’s Most Spectacular Pitcher Award and Pablo Sandoval: Minor League Player of the Year) and welcoming and introducing 2008 top draft pick Buster Posey, one would’ve thought it would be a Giant night with Tim Lincecum on the hill. 

However, from the start of the game, you can tell it was going to be a long night for Timmy. Giants ended up losing 9-3. Clearly, Lincecum didn’t have his best stuff as he loaded the bases and allowed one run in the first inning, struggling from the start.  Lincecum was in strikeout mode from the start and didn’t have command of all his pitches.  He did have nine strikeouts and set a franchise record for strikeouts in a season with 252.  Lincecum left with two-runners on base in the 5th inning, only down 4-3, lasting only 4 1/3 innings pitched.  However, he was barely over the 100 pitch mark and manager Bruce Bochy seen enough and didn’t want to overwork his young stud.  The move backfired as Keiichi Yabu gave up a two-run double and then gave up another run to put the game somewhat out of reach 7-3.  Lincecum’s stat line for the night was 4.1IP 6H 6R 6ER 5BB 9K.  He had 6 ER, but two of them should’ve been unearned due to an error on a groundball by Rich Aurilia, but the official scorer changed the error to hit after initially ruling it an error. Giants have protested that ruling, in hopes of giving Lincecum a fair stat line of only 4 earned runs. Lincecum doesn’t really care about stats or the Cy Young Award. He clearly just wants to win and give his team a chance to win.  He stated that this was a “garbage start” and was clearly frustrated by this start. The good news is he has one more start to finish on a good note and make a final case for Cy Young. However, chances are slimmer after losing two straight decisions, while other Cy Young contender Webb has won his past two decisions.  Things could be interesting if Webb falters in his final start and Lincecum bounces back and pitches well in his final start. We will see what happens.  Another thing to add is Lincecum will be facing the rival Dodgers and there is no other team that you want to finish your season against with a win.  This last week also marks a chance for the young guys to make a case for spots and roles on next season’s squad. However, Sabean has a lot of work to do in the offseason and hopefully make a couple moves, but either way he has found out a lot about this season’s squad and few young guys emerged to be everyday players, such as outfielder Fred Lewis, catcher-infielder Pablo Sandoval, and shortstop/second baseman Emmanuel Burriss.   Only time will tell, what the future of the Giants roster will look like in 2009.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS