Lincecum: 2 Cy Youngs, 3 titles
No starting pitcher has earned the necessary 75% of the vote with less than 2,000 innings pitched, and Tim Lincecum didn’t crack 1,700 during his 10-year career. His 19.9 Wins Above Replacement put him in an excellent but far from historic rent district of peers such as Jordan Zimmermann and Rick Porcello and is barely 60% the output of the enshrined starting pitcher with the lowest WAR.
Yet to consider Lincecum’s career through the cold and impersonal lens of modern metrics and the length of his peak and other such measurables is to largely miss the point of his impact on the game.
And his decade in the big leagues, at the least, was the very definition of fame.
It can be said that Barry Bonds built Pacific Bell/Oracle Park, and that Buster Posey was the linchpin and future Hall of Famer for San Francisco Giants teams that startled the baseball world by bringing three World Series championships in five years to China Basin.
Yet it was Lincecum who for four electric years was appointment viewing, stoking San Francisco in a fashion that even late-career Bonds – largely a stationary walkhome run machine – could not.
The case for
When Lincecum gave up just one earned run in 31 innings of five Class AAA starts, the Giants summoned him to debut on May 6, 2007.
Never mind that it was about six weeks before the likely deadline for players to eventually need three full years to reach arbitration eligibility – a move that would later cost the Giants tens of millions of dollars. Big Time Timmy
Jim was ready.
His first two full seasons produced back-to-back National League Cy Young Awards, and his 2008 campaign was nothing short of a masterpiece. Lincecum led the major leagues in strikeouts (265), adjusted ERA (168), fielding independent pitching (2.62) and strikeouts per nine innings (10.5). He won 18 games for a 72-90 Giants squad whose everyday lineup was a mix of fringe big leaguers (John Bowker, Jose Castillo, Fred Lewis) and veterans hanging on (Ray Durham, Aaron Rowand, Omar Vizquel).
Lincecum practically replicated his 2008 season in 2009 – 10.4 strikeouts per nine, 261 strikeouts, 2.34 FIP (which removes results of balls hit in play) – and suddenly the Giants improved to an 88-win team. A year later, he pitched them into the playoffs on the final day of the regular season, his “F--yeah!” on a live mic setting the tone for the first of three World Series title runs.
The 2010 playoffs started and ended on Lincecum’s terms – he pitched a two-hit, 14-strikeout shutout against Atlanta in Game 1 of the NL division series and struck out 10 over eight three-hit innings in Game 5 of the World Series, his second win in as many Series starts.
In 2011, the Giants’ odd-year curse kicked in, and Lincecum would provide the coda to the best four-year run of his time – 977 strikeouts in 8812⁄3 innings, 62 wins in 131 starts and, somewhat remarkably, an identical 2.81 ERA and FIP.
The case against
Lincecum fell to the Giants at the 10th overall pick in 2006 despite a decorated career at the University of Washington because, simply, he defied physical limits. At a generously listed 5-foot-11, Lincecum pumped his fastball into the upper 90s with wildly unique mechanics that he and his father stubbornly adhered to, to the chagrin of many scouts.
The torque required to power his 5-11 frame down the mound to generate all that velocity became an unsustainable equation. Lincecum’s velocity gradually fell off a steep slope as well and by their 2012 Series run, he was largely relegated to the bullpen (and pitched well – posting a 0.69 ERA in five multi-inning relief appearances).
But his hips were slowly degenerating, and by 2015 he’d require arthroscopic surgery on his left labrum. As he put it the next year, he was now apprehensive where he used to be explosive. He’d finish his career a 110-89 pitcher, with a respectable 3.74 ERA and 1.29 ERA, with 1,736 strikeouts.
Voting trends
Lincecum has so far received just five votes of the 161 publicly revealed ballots via Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker. That would leave him short of the minimum 5% necessary to stay on the ballot for 2023, although anonymous voters may be more inclined to offer a tip of the cap to Lincecum’s special career.
Overall outlook
For Cooperstown? Not great. Yet Lincecum’s legend is more than secure.