Implications of the Lincecum deal

After two Cy Young seasons, two World Series titles
and a no-hitter, Tim Lincecum is a fan favorite
in San Francisco — and he's staying put.

The San Francisco Giants this week reached agreement with Tim Lincecum to a two-year, $35 million contract. This raised a number of eyebrows, as Lincecum has had two consecutive subpar seasons — and displayed decreasing velocity in the process.

He'll turn 30 next June, and he's not the pitcher who won consecutive Cy Young Awards at age 24 and 25. But the Giants were still willing to give him $17.5 million each of the next two seasons in hopes that he'll either recapture his old dominance or find a way to succeed with his new normal.

Good luck with that.

To be sure, this contract isn't going to cripple the Giants any more than the Barry Zito contract (seven years, $126 million) did. The Giants won two World Series during that period, with Zito not even on the postseason roster for one of them.

The Lincecum signing may be unique, just as Lincecum himself has been a unique pitcher. Or it may be a harbinger of a grossly inflated market for free agent starters, fueled by a fresh wave of national television money (each team gets an addition $30 million to $40 million a year under the new deal).

The Twins have at least $40 million in payroll space to play with. The problem for Terry Ryan and Co. is pursuing free-agent pitching isn't having money to offer; it's finding good pitchers (by which I mean they can be more than Kevin Correia) who will take the Twins' money.

This is the list of pending free agents as compiled by Baseball Prospectus. (I note that the list includes Lincecum, so it is not necessarily up-to-date). There are a lot of pitchers on that list, but very few one would feel comfortable throwing an eight-figure salary at. I don't see anybody who fits Baseball America's precise definition of a "No. 1 starter," or Keith Law's definition of an "ace."

Roy Halladay and Johan Santana? A few years ago, yes; today, no. Jon Lester? Rest assured, the Red Sox will pick up his option; he won't hit the market. Tim Hudson? Coming off an injury himself, and at age 38 he's unlikely to sign on to a rebuilding process. Matt Garza? Been there, done that.

There are some interesting, and more plausible, names on that list, to be sure: Jorge De La Rosa, Jason Hammel, Josh Johnson, Phil Hughes ... They all come with serious question marks, questions of health and ability.

As Ryan has said, there are 25 teams likely to be chasing free agent pitchers, and the Twins won't be the only ones with money burning a hole in their pockets. Lincecum figures to be just the first pitcher this offseason pulling in a free agent deal that seems bafflingly large.

Notes, quotes and comments

Fans in San Francisco count Tim Lincecum's strikeouts.

This just in: Tim Lincecum is a pretty good pitcher.

There's no real embarrassment in being shut down by Lincecum, but the lineup Thursday afternoon was, of necessity, so overloaded with right-handed hitters that his domination was very predictable.

The Twins have built their strong June (they're 15-5 for the month even after losing their last two games) on run prevention — pitching and defense. For the season, they're 10-8 in pitcher's duels — game in which the two teams combine for five runs fewer — and they've somehow managed to win four games in which they could score just one run.

Minnesota pitched (and defended) well enough to win two of the three games in San Francisco. They only hit well enough to win one, however. And unless and until some of the big bats get back into the lineup, it will be difficult for this team to continue to climb.

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Jim Riggleman has managed
four teams — San Diego,
Chicago Cubs, Seattle and
Washington — with a
record of 662-824.

There are only 30 major league managerial jobs, so it's always surprising when an incumbent decides to leave — especially when his squad has won 11 of 12.

But that's what Jim Riggleman did Thursday — resign from the Washington Nationals job. His explanation, in a nutshell: He wanted a contract extension, and general manager Mike Rizzo wouldn't talk to him about it.

Riggleman probably figured that this hot streak — the lowly Nats are now above .500, despite not having their best player for most of the season — gave him prime leverage right now. Rizzo figured he was bluffing, and Riggleman went Johnny Paycheck on him: Take This Job and Shove It.

Rizzo has blasted Riggleman for walking out, and I have a certain sympathy with Rizzo. But I also figure that the relationship between the two men couldn't have been very good, and Rizzo probably shares the blame for that.

And at least Riggleman took a direct and honest approach to it. He could have turned passive-aggressive on Rizzo, could have taken the attitude of "you don't want to deal with my concerns, I won't deal with yours." That could have been more damaging to the organization.

Riggleman has gotten a bit of a reputation as a professional interim manager — not necessarily a long term guy, but a stabilizing figure.  Walking out in midseason pretty much wrecks that image.

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As expected, Jim Hoey is going back to Rochester to make room for Joe Nathan in the Twins bullpen. No move yet to active Jim Thome.

Powering their way to the title

Tim Lincecum has led the National
League in strikeouts each of the
past three seasons.

Chalk one up for the theory that power arms are the key to October success.

The San Francisco Giants have some big arms in their starting rotation, to be sure.

The Giants pitching staff led all of baseball in strikeouts. And when they pared their rotation from  five to four for the postseason — pushing soft-tosser Barry Zito aside — they came at their opponents with a knack for missing bats.

• Tim Lincecum in the regular season struck out 231 batters in 212 innings.
• Matt Cain fanned 177 in 223.1 innings.
• Jonathan Sanchez whiffed 205 in 193.1 innings.
• Madison Bumgarner, who spent a good chunk of the season regaining his stuff in the minors, K'd 86 in 111 major league innings.

The four playoff starters in the regular season stuck out a total of 699 men in 739.2 innings — 8.5 K/9.

And that takes a lot of strain off the defense, which in the Giants case, isn't all that mobile.

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Yes, that's a new header up on top,  one I created during the summer to use during the offseason (thus the Rogers Hornsby quotation).  I have another lined up to impose on you during spring training. The caps will probably return when the 2011 regular season gets under way — "probably" giving me an out if something better comes to mind.

Feel free to tell me what you think of this one. Or,  if you remember it, what you thought of the Halloween special that was deployed on Sunday.

Old Cy and new stats

The lede to the Associated Press story Thursday on Tim Lincecum's second straight Cy Young Award:

Talk about a freak — Tim Lincecum needed just 15 wins to bag another NL Cy Young Award. Yup, throw out those old baseball cards. Wins and losses don't mean much anymore when it comes time for voters to pick baseball's best pitchers. It's all about WHIP, FIP, BABIP and other lines of alphabet soup.

For the uninitiated — I'm sure there are some out there — WHIP is Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (a staple of fantasy baseball for years, but Dick-n-Bert treat it on Twins broadcasts as if it were a completely novel concept); FIP is Fielding Independent Pitching, which attempts to remove the quality of the defense behind the pitcher from the stats; and BABIP is Batting Average on Balls in Play, which is normally stable from pitcher to pitcher. A markedly low BABIP is regarded by statheads as a sign of abnormal luck.

From the New York Times article on Zack Greinke's Cy Young win:

(Teammate Brian) Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors. “That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Greinke said.

This strikes me as putting the cart before the horse. Throw strikes and keep the ball in the park, and your stats — whether they be traditional ones, such as ERA and strikeouts, or the sabermetric darlings, such as FIP and BABIP — will take care of themselves. All those numbers have the same purpose— to measure effectiveness. They're just doing it in different ways.

Bannister is a smart cookie. He understood why the stats suggested that his 3.87 ERA in 2007 overstated his effectiveness – and he didn't take it as a personal attack. It remains to be seen if his understanding of how the stats predict future struggles can help him avoid those problems; so far, the evidence is that they don't.

Greinke (and Lincecum), on the other hand, are both smart and talented. They would be the best pitchers in their leagues if nobody had ever heard of BABIP.

They just might not be recognized as such.

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Greinke won his award with 16 wins; Lincecum with 15. These are historically low numbers for Cy Young winners.

Bill James has been hammering for decades at this theme: The Won-Loss stat in a given season is overrated. His analysis, repeated and echoed over the years, appears to have taken root.

I suspect that the tipping point may have been the 2005 AL Cy Young vote.

Bartolo Colon of Anaheim had a 21-8 record, but his ERA was 3.48 and he had just 157 strikeouts in 222 innings.

Johan Santana of the Twins was just 16-7 — with a 2.81 ERA and 238 Ks in 233 innings.

Colon won the Cy Young. Santana was third (behind Mariano Rivera) — and all through 2006, there was an obvious sense among baseball writers that they blew that vote. Yes, Colon had more wins, but Santana was better, and they knew it.

This year, there were obvious alternatives to Lincecum and Greinke. NL voters could have gone for Adam Wainwright (19-8, 2.63 in 233 innings) or his St. Louis teammate, Chris Carpenter (17-4, 2.24 in 192 innings).

With the 2005 mindset, Wainwright would have won.

In the AL, alternatives would have been Felix Hernandez (19-5, 2.49), or even Justin Verlander (19-9, 3.45) or CC Sabathia (19-8, 3.37).

Again, the 2005 mindset, valuing victories over all else, would have gone for King Felix. Which would certainly have been a better choice than Colon was in 2005.

But Greinke was better. The right guys won.