Should the Giants Back Off Tim Lincecum?

by Harry Pavlidis on Sep 26, 2009 12:41 PM EDT in Pitch f/x Goodies

Last night, Tim Lincecum pitched well but got beat by Carlos Zambrano. What struck me was a difference in peak and overall velocity - Big Z was throwing harder than The Freak.

Zambrano peaked at 96.3, Zambrano was strong, just outside the top third of his peak range. His average fastball speed (93.8, with or without sinkers) was 7th out of 73 starts in average fastball speed (two- and four-seam combined). It was also he best average fastball velocity of 2009.

So, there was probably nothing "in the air" that night pushing The Freak's speed numbers down. Lincecum topped out at 94.3 - that's his lowest peak on record. He averaged 91.4 mph. Throw out the two-seamers and he's at 91.6. Out of Lincecum's 77 PITCHf/x starts, that's dead last.

Pretty impressive for a guy without his best stuff. As the Wild Card slips away, it may be time to protect the franchise's most valuable asset.

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BTW

I’ve got more on Zambrano’s outing at Cubs f/x
http://www.cubsfx.com/2009/09/is-lou-expecting-too-much-from-zambrano.html

by Harry Pavlidis on Sep 26, 2009 12:47 PM EDT reply actions

The independent variable here is starts?

If that’s the case, is this sort of declining velocity over the course of a season often a sign that injury may follow? That would be my intuition but I’m not sure how common this kind of decline is.

by Tommy Bennett on Sep 26, 2009 3:16 PM EDT reply actions

It's probably not injury

More likely fatigue, every pitcher has it.

by vivaelpujols on Sep 26, 2009 4:20 PM EDT up reply actions

They were riding him like a broken-down nag last season when the team wasn't even remotely a contender

Brian Sabean would much rather get a contract extension and have Tim Lincecum blow out his arm than get fired and have the Giants win the World Series, so I’m thinking this is not going to happen.

Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving

by PaulThomas on Sep 27, 2009 2:10 AM EDT reply actions

Same thing will happen to Greinke.

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"

by Justin Bopp on Sep 27, 2009 3:54 AM EDT up reply actions

I hope not

but history does tend to repeat itself

by Harry Pavlidis on Sep 27, 2009 8:31 AM EDT up reply actions

And truthfully, for non-humanitarian/benevolent reasons, why shouldn't they?

Assuming he survives his recently signed contract (one good thing that GMDM has done) and is still the same player, will they ever be able to afford him? From a purely-cynical managerial approach, why not?

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"

by Justin Bopp on Sep 28, 2009 12:56 AM EDT up reply actions

As a Giants fan...

I really like Lincecum throwing a lot of pitches. I like when he is left in for the eighth and ninth innings when most pitchers wouldn’t get that chance. The Giant’s had a break out year. One nobody was expecting. The Giants arguably have the worst offense in the whole league. If you had a Cy Young pitcher who is the face of your franchise and you are looking to extend his contract or resign him in the near future, and you have absolutely no offense. You either need to let him pitch and show him you trust him and will let him try and get wins for himself. Or start scoring runs. The Giants are not going to score any runs soon. If Lincecum was on the Yankees, pray he doesn’t ever end up there, he would be a 20 game winner easily.

by BucksForever on Sep 29, 2009 4:09 AM EDT reply actions

Lincecum used to throw all 2-seamers. I may be wrong, but I’m not aware that he’s mixed a 4-seamer in there at all….

by Missing Barry on Sep 29, 2009 9:44 PM EDT reply actions

Here are all of Lincecum's pitches over 90 MPH this year

Sure looks like he throws a 4 seamer… and a 2 seamer. Harry, is that a cutter I see?

by vivaelpujols on Sep 30, 2009 2:18 AM EDT up reply actions

I’m not seeing two distinct groupings at all…

by Missing Barry on Sep 30, 2009 5:06 PM EDT up reply actions

Exactly

And the spread in horizontal movement of all of those pitches is huge – nearly 15 inches. That implies that he’s been throwing a 4 seamer and a 2 seamer, and a lot of pitches that could easily be classified as either one.

by vivaelpujols on Sep 30, 2009 7:21 PM EDT up reply actions

He may very well be throwing both. I don’t think simply looking at the spread in horizontal movement is very strong evidence, though. Do you have a graph like that for previous years? I know for a fact in previous years he only threw 2-seamers – so if there’s a larger variation this year that seems like it would indicate he’s mixing in 4-seamers but if it’s similar to his past spreads than he’s probably still only throwing 2-seamers.

Just a general question – do you create those graphs yourself out of data you’ve pulled, or is there a place online to do it easily and quickly? It seems if I want that kind of data from the pitch fx database I have to pull down games individually, and Fangraphs doesn’t seem to me like it has that data easily available.

by Missing Barry on Oct 1, 2009 12:24 PM EDT up reply actions

I have my own database

I wrote a tutorial about how to make one awhile back in the “Saberizing a Mac” series. However, that takes a lot of work to get going. If you know how to use MySQL, here as an SQL dump (updated daily) for 2009.

http://www.wantlinux.net/baseball/?C=M;O=D

Just download the one that starts with pbp, unzip it and then import it into your Database. It is missing some pitches and some other data, but it should be good for most of your needs.

If you don’t have an SQL database, consult the first article in the “Saberizing a Mac”.

by vivaelpujols on Oct 1, 2009 12:53 PM EDT up reply actions

So I’ve been going through those articles, and I ended up going to baseball-databank.org, and it looks like they have comma-delimited data. If I pulled all that would I need to use the SQL database in your link for anything, or does baseball-databank not have the pitch fx data?

by Missing Barry on Oct 1, 2009 3:39 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm not sure I understand your question

BDB is just historical stats. If you want to add the Pitch f.x one, go to Sequel (or whatever you use to “talk” to your database) and add a new database. Name it “pitchfx” and press “import”. Then you click on the pitchfx database and select “SQL” under the format.

by vivaelpujols on Oct 1, 2009 4:21 PM EDT up reply actions

Well I’m trying to see if I don’t have to use SQL at all. I have some other stuff at my disposal (namely, SAS) and it looks like it would be really easy just to import the original database as a .csv and throw it into SAS. So my question is just what’s in the baseball-databank data? Does it have what I want or is the only available pitch FX data elsewhere (the link you gave me) and only available in SQL format?

by Missing Barry on Oct 1, 2009 4:51 PM EDT up reply actions

The pitch f/x data is only available at the link I gave you

Or you can try to parse it yourself

by vivaelpujols on Oct 1, 2009 5:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Ok, thanks.

by Missing Barry on Oct 1, 2009 11:36 PM EDT up reply actions

Also, pitches only have 3 real attributes

Velocity, vertical movment and horizontal movement. Based on those 3 things, a large part of Lincecum’s pitches have the attributes of a 2 seamer – whether that’s intentional or not is kind of irrelevant.

by vivaelpujols on Oct 1, 2009 12:55 PM EDT up reply actions

I realize this is probably a bit n00bular, but can anybody explain the hole between 85 and 90 for most of the year?

Is that just the zone he doesn’t hit? If it’s in there, should we assume it isn’t doing what he wanted (not fast nor slow enough)?

Also, can anybody show me where to find data like that? It’s beautiful!

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"

by Justin Bopp on Sep 30, 2009 3:46 AM EDT reply actions

The simple answer is he doesn’t throw his fastball that slow or his changeup that fast.

by Missing Barry on Sep 30, 2009 5:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Catching up

OK, turn around and it’s thread explosion …

Park effects smear pitch distributions in PITCHf/x, you have to go by park and often by game, to distinguish four- and two-seam fastballs. Believe me, I’m doing it (manually) for every damn rookie.

Lincecum throws mostly four seamers, since he came up. He started throwing two seamers in addition in 2008, later in the year.

He does look to cut the fastball at times, but I think that’s an artefact of his extreme over-the-top release. A small, but normal, error in PITCHf/x (and Freak’s technique, perhaps) push the four-seamer over the top, giving it “cut”. It’s not unusual to see, but he may indeed be trying to cut the ball. Someone should ask him.

Barry’s answer is right, the gap is just the healthy space between the heat and the off-speed stuff.

by Harry Pavlidis on Oct 1, 2009 9:23 PM EDT reply actions

Lincecum throws mostly four seamers, since he came up. He started throwing two seamers in addition in 2008, later in the year.

Not sure what that’s based on? When he initially came up he gripped every fastball as a 2-seamer. This was talked about a bunch of times in Giants telecasts…

I could see it behaving more like a 4-seamer because of his really over-the-top realease, but again, unless something changed the grip has always been a 2-seam grip.

by Missing Barry on Oct 1, 2009 11:39 PM EDT up reply actions