Tag Archives: Tim Lincecum

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LINCEBLOG: SF Giants Home Opening Weekend practically Wagnerian, complete with the Ring, a bunch of them; Oh, yeah, they played a game too

The ring’s the thing.

Wagner knew it. Opera lovers know it.

The Giants definitely know it.

 

Actual Tiffany ring with 52 round melee diamonds, and seven round diamonds on both sides representing the team’s seven world championships.

In the sports biz, the quest for the ring keeps aging jocks in ointment.

But what about the sports fan? Does the Giants opening day celebration weekend– three days of hoopla and some OK baseball—really have to feel like Wagner’s Ring cycle?

(True, Wagner had four operas, but the Giants seemed to skip over “Siegfied” and end with Sunday’s game that felt a bit like “Twilight of the Gods”).

In some ways, it’s almost too bad they have to play a game.

 

Lincecum gets his second ring,as closer Romo romps by

 

It’s so much more fun to see Tim Lincecum get his ring and greet the Giants  legends ( today it was Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Cepeda, and Gaylord Perry). It’s certainly easier on the emotions.

 

 

Two legends: Gaylord Perry talking with Willie Mays

 

 

It’s all ups, no downs. Unless you’re looking at your ring.

 

Lincecum greets Giants legend Juan Marichal, as Willie McCovery (wheelchair) and Willie Mays (seated) watch.

 

So early in the season, compared to a “celebration” an actual game is somewhat anti-climactic. 

Or at least, sets up a game for the drama we saw on Sunday, where we start high, rise to a peak, then  finish tragically.

Oh, well. That’s why they play 162—and we endure all of them.

The celebration was a total Giants extravaganza  with the  Tiffany rings brought into AT&T Park  via cable car, and then hand delivered by the city’s finest grip men to the Giants.

 

How do you top the fireboat delivering the championship flag? With a cable car and grip men. It’s Giants-style.

 

There were symbols galore in such a dramatic entrance.

Rings were given out.

And the streamers flew.

 

Unfortunately, it was more bang than the Giant’s offense could deliver.

 

Oh yeah, and then there was that game.

All I can say this morning is,  it’s a good thing Maggie Thatcher died.

The Iron Lady wasn’t Lou Gehrig, but the passing of a world leader puts things in perspective and flushes the news cycle of the trivial.  (Though if you are still mourning the 49ers Super Bowl loss, you can’t be helped.)

The Giants lost the game 14-3, and if you’re wondering when did David Akers join the Giants and doesn’t he usually miss his field goals, once again, you can’t be helped.

No, we’re talking baseball and Matt Cain here, and as perfect as Cain was for one special night in 2012, he was just as abysmally imperfect for Sunday’s garish loss.

For the first three innings, Cain seemed like Cain, retiring the Cardinals in order, with two  strikeouts.

Cain really was perfect. But then came that 4th that was beyond imperfect:  nine runs and no explanation.

The Cardinals hit six singles, two walks and a ground-rule double to go up 7-2, and Cain was out of the game.

Cain talked later about how the game can be humbling. Perhaps, the Giants needed that on the weekend they celebrated the highs of last year.  

 

Cain learns you can’t rest on your rings

 

 

To see the pitching—felt to be the Giant’s strength—be so ineffective is definitely humbling (one pitching bright spot has been the relief work of Chad Gaudin).  Giants’ bats have already been humbled. The Giants continued to be hapless with runners in scoring position, 2-21 coming into the game. They added to that negative stat in the first inning that initially seemed so joyous at the start. Angel Pagan, the hottest of all Giants coming into the game 6-20, hit a sinking line drive into the left-center alley that enabled him to dive into third.  But he died there like a bridesmaid.   Scuataro, coming into the game 2-19, took a called third strike. Then Sandoval, hot with two HRs and 4 RBI in five games, struck out swinging. And then MVP Posey added to the futility with a meek groundout.

Some sliver linings: First hits for rookie Nick Noonan, and third-string catcher Gullermo Quiroz.  Quiroz’s hit came in the 9th, a pinch-hit single that gave the Giant’s one last gasp of offense.

Oh, well, the team has their rings, and a full season yet to go.

Let the people talk about whether the weekend was a bit too much.

What we’ve seen the last few years is how a winning Giants team has truly become tantamount to a public institution.

A lot of it I trust is due to Giants CEO Larry Baer growing up a Giants fan and a native San Franciscan. I knew Larry growing up. We both attended Lowell High, and were on the debate team together. (I did play JV Baseball).  The other day when we talked, it wasn’t about the Giants, but our families. He told me where his kids were going to college, and I told him my kid was going to Cal, Larry’s alma mater.  That deserved a fist bump. The exchange revealed how all that personal stuff, the human stuff, really matters.

That makes three-day baseball celebrations, where the players and legends and the fans gather over the game, more important than we think.

Baer and the Giants more than just connect the dots between the past and the present.

They are cementing the legacy at 3rd and King.

 

 

 

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Linceblog: Giants celebration weekend like baseball’s version of Wagner’s Ring Cycle; Posey’s MVP day, a little on the game, and if Posey catches Lincecum

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Saturday was about connecting greatness.

 

Giants Greatness: Past and Present

 

We didn’t exactly have that for the game though.

With the Giants, winning is always about timing. And playing  perfect baseball, for now. Later, when they’re sharp, they can be more human. But this early in the season, when you’re not so sharp, you’ve got to get a little luckier.

On Saturday’s game, the hits came at the wrong time, the defense failed when it needed to be perfect, and the starting pitching–which had been perfect with no earned runs through four games and 26 innings—finally showed its human side.

Ryan Vogelsong talked about not throwing enough good pitches at the right time after the 6-3 loss to the Cardinals. 

It’s tough. With a few breaks in that rough first inning that featured a passed ball and a wild pitch, a timely strike on a 3-2 count to former Giant Carlos Beltran would have gotten Vogelsong out of a jam unscathed.

The Giants got back the run with a Pence home run, and Vogelsong settled down. But  in the fifth, a hit, a walk, a dropped ball at first, and again Beltran stepped in to hurt the Giants with a two-run single.  

Early in a 162-game season, it’s a good thing they play another  150 or so. 

You can’t have another celebration.

Oh, wait.

You can.

And today it’s the rings. Not Wagner’s Ring, but three days of celebrations do make the Giants opening week comparable to a Wagnerian Cycle.  (Baseball has a cycle too, but I don’t think it includes a few bars from “Ride of the Valkyries.”)

More on the rings in a later post.

The Giants are great nostalgists.

And when another layer of achievement is recorded, they gladly bring in the past to welcome the new glory.

It makes the Giants one of the more humanistic baseball organizations in MLB. Sure, in baseball, the numbers tend to dehumanize things, from stats to salary figures. But in the end, it’s the human connections that make the difference.

The Giants are good at connecting greatness.

 

So for me, seeing MVPs like Kevin Mitchell (he of the one-hand-bare-handed grab see it on YouTube), and Jeff Kent (late of “Survivor”), next to the legends, McCovey and Mays…that was a sight. (Incidentally, no, Bonds sighting, and he won three of those MVPs).

Posey stayed off the field until the appropriate time.

 

Posey hears the cheers as he emerges for the celebration

 

 

A baseball star’s relationship to fans isn’t bonded in words. When the player takes great actions, the cheers are what it’s about.  And as Buster emerged from the dugout, they showed the love.

 

Posey with the 2012 MVP award

 

 

Posey held his award, and then as Mays and others looked on, he gave an appropriately short, gracious speech, thanking his family.

And his teammates.

There in the dugout were three that have been the other end of his battery. In between Cain and Zito, there was Lincecum looking on.

 

Posey was great last year, but with a grueling season the talk has been if he’ll get enough rest to do it again this year.  And that always leads to speculation about whether Posey will catch Lincecum, or take that day off. This coming week, Lincecum is scheduled to start Tuesday night, and then comeback for a Wednesday.  Bochy told CSN BayArea’s Andrew Baggerly that Posey will likely rest Tuesday.

So will the schedule dictate Posey rest when Lincecum pitches?  

Maybe, but from this observers eye, it seems to be a coincidence—at this point.

I do think Posey has to be out there catching, especially Lincecum.  If I were Tim, I’d want the best. And Posey is right now.

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Linceblog: SF Giants home opener, Zito’s Cy Young Anonymous, and the drama of pre-game ceremonies

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When you’re a fallen, award-winning pitcher, a tad off from greatness, it’s not like you can work things out by going to a Cy Young  Anonymous.

So it’s a good thing Tim Lincecum can savor teammate Barry Zito’s miraculous comeback from the massive albatross known as the $126 million contract.

Zito was a master of craft and timing in leading the Giants to a 1-0 victory in the AT&T 2013 home opener.

 

He  kept  the Cardinal hitters off-balance  in such a way that just when you thought the Cardinals were getting to him, they weren’t — as in Yadier Molina’s towering drive to left that was just west of the foul pole in the fourth inning.  Zito would simply make Molina put the ball in play, and then timely defense saved the day,  in this case, an inning ending 5-4-3 double play courtesy of the reigning heavyweight third baseman Pablo Sandoval.

Once again, it’s the way modern Giants victories are made.

Good pitching, with timely good defense, and timely good bases-on-balls.

That was the Giants’ offense. The team walked all over the Cardinals.

The Giants’ fourth inning was like a Little League special. A Blanco walk, a single from Crawford, a bunt by Zito to load the bases, and then an RBI walk from Pagan.

But Zito, with bullpen help from Affeldt and Romo made it stand.

When it was over, I realized Giants fans have seen Zito do this time and again over the last year, and not just in the post-season when he faced the Cards and shut them down.

Perhaps it was the perception after the big contract, but Zito was considered a pariah for the longest time as he searched for a way to be great again.

But then, in a slow, almost uneventful way, he has built a new resume that is more spectacular than it may have appeared.

Going into the home opener, the Giants have won all of Zito’s last 14 starts, where the lefty went 9-0 with a 3.46 ERA. Make that 15 starts, 10-0. Who knew?  And it all adds up.

It may not have looked like much while it was all happening. But the Cardinals know.

They were Zitoed. Again.

Soon to be 35, Zito is still a young guy compared to Jamie Moyer, who in 2012 was the oldest at age 50 to win an MLB game. Zito has said he’s modeled himself after Moyer, and so maybe Zito is just coming into his real prime.

With baseball, it’s always helpful to go back to kid terms, when the game was really fun. Zito is six years older than Lincecum. That’s  like a junior high kid watching the high-school varsity senior. It’s hard not to imagine Lincecum taking notes as he watches the evolution of Zito.

Like I said,  it’s not like you can get support from a Cy Young Anonymous.

 

Lincecum back in the dugout as Opening Day game begins

 

That was the home opener, but the circumstances of the game were preceded by massive pomp, too.

In this case, the Giants were bringing home the World Series trophy, and raising a championship flag again.

 

Bochy and team blessed by gleam of the World Series trophy

 

 

Sabre me with all the stats and numbers and make it a science all you want, but the game is really about heart and corn.

So while it’s become somewhat fashionable to pooh-pooh a game day celebration (they can’t all have the drama of a Lou Gehrig farewell), I say the Giants do corn as well as anyone.

With the stadium filled with the kind of orchestral music used to spur emotion in bad films, the ceremony began. (Later, Bochy would say the pre-game indeed elicited a few “tears” among  some players).

When the flag came into McCovey Cove on fire boat, I wondered who would raise the flag? Captain Hook? (Or Captain Morgan? Thankfully, no one thought of product placement).

Some  pre-game rumor had it that maybe the flag raiser would be a past player, perhaps a Bonds return?

But the flag raiser(s) would be six veteran members of the team, Lincecum among them.

Lincecum seemed to beam with genuine pride as he jogged to and from centerfield to raise the flag.

That’s why it’s hard to imagine him not being a Giant forever.

 

Giant forever?

 

 

Oddly, two players who were not in the group of flag-raisers were the battery of the day. Zito looked like he was meditating or something on the bull-pen mound as coach Dave Righetti stood by.

 

Celebration? “I’m Barry Z. , and I am a Cy Young winner.”

 

And there was the new face of the team, Buster Posey, putting on the so-called “tools of ignorance” watching but focused on the opener.

 

Posey in pre-game warm up watches the flag-raisers

 

 

Posey gets his due with the MVP ceremony in game two of the series.

See my tweets @emilamok

 

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Linceblog: Tim Lincecum says it’s not a make or break year for him

OK, this is no April Fool’s joke.  Our half-Filipino/true Asian American Major League Baseball superstar, a winner of two Cy Young awards, and two World Series rings, takes the mound against the  Los Angeles Dodgers tonight in his season opener. But he’s no longer the San Francisco Giants best player.  Not even the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th best player.

What has happened to Tim Lincecum?

Here was the guy they called the “Franchise,” and for a time he was the “Face,” as he adorned everything from soda cups to ducats. And it was all due to being the improbable athlete with the unusual delivery and the unhittable pitches. Those were also the main reasons he was called the “Freak,” though there were likely other recreational activities that could have earned him that moniker.

But now, the freakishness has normalized for Lincecum, and while still a fan favorite–especially among Filipino Americans–he  is neither “Franchise” nor “Face.” He’s gone from high-test to regular, just like his fast-ball.  And now the question is whether he’s lost the chance to get one of those long-term lockups recently awarded teammates Buster Posey, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner  that essentially make them forever Giants in their prime.

And after all he’s done for the Giants?  I mean, we’re not talking Aubrey Huff here.

After following the Giants as a fan all these years, I’m writing this blog more regularly this season (Call it the Linceblog on Amok.com) because of what Lincecum has meant for the Giants and to the Filipino American community. When there’s a dearth of high-profile Filipino Americans in anything, a star baseball player does more than you think to a community’s self-esteem. His troubles on the mound make this a critical year for Lincecum watchers. It’s hard to imagine him not being a Giant for life.

In the clubhouse after his last pre-season start against Oakland at AT&T Park, I got a chance to ask him about the start of the season.

What you notice about Lincecum is that while he’s often referred to as “short” at 5-feet-11 inches, he’s tall for a half-Filipino guy, though still fairly slight. He’s also more pensive and thoughtful in his answers than most jocks.

I didn’t want to ask him if he regrets not taking the big payday when it was in front of him (reportedly a five-year $100 million dollar deal after 2011).  Instead,  he signed a two-year $40.5 million deal (that still puts him in the top ten among all baseball stars), and makes him a free agent at the end of this year.

But he may not be in position to command $15 million, let alone $20 million a year, unless his performance dramatically improves.

So I asked him as the season begins,  if this was a “make or break year” for him:

“Not really, that concern is the last worry, the last emotion on my mind, it’s more excitement and obviously ..ah.. conviction. This year is going to be a big, big year for me, but I don’t look at it as a make or break year, I look at it as an opportunity to make myself better and come out at the end of the season on top.

“You never want to take a negative approach to anything in baseball or anything in this profession, so just to be able to stay positive after coming off a rough year last year is good for me. I’m carrying all the positives I can into this year.”

The positives are the relief performances in the post-season last year. And maybe even the flashes he showed last week against the A’s. Forget about having an ERA that was the highest in the Majors for any active starter. Forget about a Spring training shortened by blister and an ERA over 10. The guy’s  staying optimistic, and he’s certainly not thinking about things like the deal that goat away.

This week in Los Angeles, CSN Bay Area Andrew Baggarly asked him more directly about why he turned down the big deal contract. Once again, Lincecum showed he’s slightly different than your basic capitalistic jock.

“It was a time where I was in my life, I wasn’t exactly ready to commit that kind of time over something that I was still learning about, by that meaning just being in this business of baseball,” Lincecum told Baggarly, then expounded further. “It’s hard for me personally to just commit years of my life ahead of time. What I’m focusing on is what I want to do now. I just don’t want to get ahead of myself.

“I’ve never been a guy who thinks too far ahead with my future. I think I’ve made that clear with my contracts. I’m still that same guy. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a Giant any less or anything like that. I just like to see where I am at the end of the year.”

So Lincecum is positive and he’s motivated.  It’s the kind of thing that helps star performers elevate their game. We’ll see if that happens this year. But if Lincecum performs like he did early on in that game against the A’s last week, the Giants could win the rubber match in this opening series against the Dodger.

Lincecum looked sharp the first three innings of that Bay Bridge Series exhibition game. He started with a nine-pitch first inning that ended with slugger Yoenis Cespedes striking out swinging on three pitches.

It was kind of the ideal Lincecum inning: A flyout, a  single, a great defensive play by Crawford to get a second out, and the big K.  If all his innings this year are like that, it would definitely mark a return to form.

The next two innings were almost as good with a nine- pitch duel against Josh Donaldson that ended with a strikeout in the second. And there was another defensive gem by Crawford.

At one point Lincecum was 20 strikes for his first 24 pitches with his fastball working the best.  He said he was just throwing what catcher Buster Posey was calling for. But then admitted afterwards he was getting a little “change-up happy.”

In the fourth inning , the second time through the line-up, the A’s caught up with Lincecum including Cespedes who homered a 2-1 pitch. Lincecum fought back and struck out the next hitter (BrandonMoss), and got the tough  Donaldson out on a fly. But his elusiveness was gone, and control became an issue. By the time Lincecum was around 70 pitches in the fifth, he was done for the night.

That has been the typical arc of a Lincecum game (with or without a pitch limit). It‘s also the reason why he’s gone from “The Franchise,” to “The Concern.”

We won’t talk yet whether the future for Lincecum is as a middle reliever. That for sure would be a shock to his bank account. 

But if Lincecum wants to remain in people’s eyes as an effective, if not dominating starter, he needs more strong innings like that first one against the A’s.

That will go a long way to end a sense that at the start of this new season he’s one of  the Giants’ biggest question marks in 2013.