MVN - Most Valuable Network

Lincecum dominates A’s in final tuneup

With just three days remaining before the beginning of the Giants’ regular season, Tim Lincecum took the mound at AT&T Park for his final tuneup, facing the Oakland A’s. The 23 year-old righty had been sidelined for part of Spring Training with groin soreness, so this last unofficial outing was important for him to get back on track before the games actually start to count. He made the most of it. And then some.

In five innings of work Lincecum faced just 16 batters, one over the minimum. Third-baseman Donnie Murphy was the lone Athletic to find his way on base, doing so by drawing a walk. But Timmy more than made up for the single free pass by holding the A’s hitless, and collecting nine punchouts. He needed just 67 pitches to get through five innings, and he converted 42 of them for strikes, earning the victory in a 3-0 decision.

Of course, dominance on the mound will need to be a regularity for the Giants to win ballgames this season, especially considering that defense has not been one of the team’s strong suits this Spring. Failing that, Tim Lincecum could find himself in the same unlucky shoes that Matt Cain was painfully wearing for most of the 2007 season. A 3.00 ERA may only be good enough for a handful of wins and 20 losses on this team, so there had better be plenty more where today’s brilliance came from in Timmy’s compact frame.

Said manager Bruce Bochy of Friday’s victory, “It was a big win for us. The way we played tonight was what we were looking for.” Considering that the Giants are now a cumulative 9-21-2, after Cactus League play and two exhibition games, one wonders just how much more of it there is to find.

Tim Lincecum is certainly trending upward. Will the rest of the team follow suit?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Tim Lincecum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.