SI’s Tom Verducci weighs in this morning with a story on Tim Lincecum’s workload. It reads like a solution in search of a problem, or perhaps a hasty catch-up to an excellent piece in this weekend’s New York Times on the tragedy of Kerry Wood’s career, a long article called “My Right Arm” by Buzz Bissinger (author of the Tony LaRussa hagiography Three Nights in August).
In “My Right Arm,” Bissinger circles several possible factors for Wood’s multiple breakdowns since his scintillating 1998 debut, but he doesn’t try to pin blame on any one source. By underlining Wood’s hazard points — a 175–pitch doubleheader at the end of high school, his brutal workload as a Cubs rookie, his indifference to conditioning, his across-the-body mechanics, his 2003 workload under Dusty Baker — Bissinger ends up doing justice to the debate without hand-waving or hysteria.
Marking his own space on the fire hydrant, Verducci instead goes for the sensational turn of phrase, fretting about the way the Giants are handling Lincecum. Here’s his nut graph:
If Billy Martin caused industry-wide reduction in pitchers' workload because of how he pushed his young Oakland starters in 1980, the breakdowns of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood of the Cubs stand as the second major event in the de-evolution of starting pitching. What Martin's pitchers did for innings (too many, the critics howled), Prior and Wood did for pitch counts (too many, the critics howled). But, to the delight of the curious and the radical thinkers, both Lincecum and Bochy seem not to have gotten the memo, as evidenced that night at Shea Stadium.
Huh? Lincecum’s final pitch count that night: 113 through 7 innings. Not exactly overextended, especially when half his innings were 1–2–3. Verducci goes on to cite Lincecum’s average of 104.5 pitches per start, a figure that might have “the pitching police sounding alarms.” Really?
A bit further on, Verducci says Lincecum is on pace for 211 innings this year, minors and majors combined, a “harrowing jump” from last year’s total of 157. A jump, yes. “Harrowing”? Questionable.
Verducci doesn’t factor in — he doesn’t even mention — that the Giants had Lincecum on a strict pitch count at Fresno, and that nearly all his minor-league innings have been as stress-free as professional pitching can be.
I generally like Verducci. He’s one of the more level-headed national baseball writers, and he actually plays the game (as he loves to let us know). But this time he wants to paint a predetermined profile, and the facts don’t quite cooperate. Here’s another clue: he interviews Lincecum, who doesn’t behave the way Verducci thinks a rookie should:
Lincecum may look like a batboy or some kid trying to sneak into the clubhouse for autographs, but he carries himself like a veteran -- almost sadly so. He bears a bored look about him, as if he's already been through a dozen major league seasons and there is nothing new to discover. He took questions from reporters after his New York start looking like a man in line at DMV.
I’m all for colorful detail and metaphor, even in sportswriting, but that “sadly so” raises red flags for me. What does Verducci want? “Gosh, sir, I’d be thrilled to talk to a real live Sports Illustrated writer! I have your articles on my bedroom wall!”
My guess: he’s caught a whiff of Marinovich about Lincecum. Todd Marinovich was the can’t-miss quarterback raised and trained by his dad to be the modern-day robot athlete. He made it to the NFL, but it turned out Todd just wanted to get high. I also have wondered what effect Lincecum’s overweening dad, the guy who built Tim’s delivery muscle-by-muscle, tendon-by-tendon, will have when the season hits a rough patch, or Tim sustains his first injury, or the Giant staff tries to move his son away from his lifelong routines (such as — no shit — only throwing 15 pitches to warm up in the bullpen).
I’ll be fair: In the last part of his piece, Verducci backs off somewhat. He acknowledges that the 110–pitch games “don’t seem outrageous,” but the 200+ IP for a rookie season might be too much. “They should manage his innings in the second half by skipping his start occasionally or sending him to the bullpen for periods.”
OK, that’s a suggestion worth considering as the season wears on, and Verducci’s right that durability questions will continue to hang over Lincecum’s head as long as the top of it remains less than six feet from Earth. But his story is like a slugger who winds up to hit a fastball and gets a change-up. He checks his swing half way through, but by then it’s too late.
