ShareThisSAN FRANCISCO - The most truthful baseball axiom -- and believe me, baseball is full of axioms --goes something like this: A team is only as good on a particular day as that day's starting pitcher.
Sunday, in the rubber game of a crucial three-game series with potential playoff implications against San Diego, Tim Lincecum was not good. Not exactly horrid, but not the Tim Lincecum we've known and to whom we've grown accustomed.
As a result, the Giants weren't much better in an 8-2 loss so one-sided it made Jonathan Sánchez's busted week-old guarantee of a sweep of the Padres all the more embarrassing.
"There were a lot of fluke hits, but hits are hits, and a loss is a loss," admitted a weary-looking Lincecum (11-7), who has dropped three consecutive decisions for the first time in his brilliant career.
"My fastball's all over the place right now. I've got to get that down-and-away fastball (working again)."
San Francisco, home to one of baseball's most hysterical fan bases in terms of pleasurable highs and depressing lows, should be justifiably worried in this case.
The reigning two-time Cy Young Award winner's fall has been that precipitous lately.
In five April starts, Lincecum was 4-0 with a 1.27 ERA. Since then, he is just 7-7. And in seven outings since the All-Star Game on July 13, "Big Time Timmy Jim" has been anything but, going 2-3 with a 4.85 ERA.
Perhaps more worrisome, his velocity, which once regularly hit 97 mph, topped out Sunday at 93 mph. Plus, he cannot stop tinkering with things, a sure sign of a pitcher badly out of sorts and uncomfortable in his skin.
Lincecum has altered his windup, his delivery and even his warmup music, risking antagonizing the spirit of Jim Morrison by changing from The Doors to MGMT.
"I'm trying to change too many things to fix things," he acknowledged. "You start focusing on the negative, and you start exacerbating things, and it manifests itself. I can't keep searching."
That's precisely what San Diego hoped to see and exactly what it got. One observer had the two newest Padres -- No. 2 hitter Miguel Tejada and cleanup man Ryan Ludwick -- working Lincecum for a combined 27 of his 93 pitches, only 57 of which were strikes.
"You could see that he was not dialed in with his location," Padres third baseman Chase Headley said. "That's no secret ... he's searching."
Again, that term. He's searching for the strike zone. A victory. Departed catcher Bengie Molina? When Lincecum received his second Cy Young Award in an on-field presentation in April, he made sure to credit in his speech Molina, who was dealt to Texas on July 1.
Though Molina's departure opened the door for Buster Posey, the numbers indicate Lincecum misses his former catcher. His ERA with Molina this season is 3.23. With Posey, it's 4.86. Just sayin'.
The most maddening part of Lincecum's most recent outing, in which he lasted just 3 2/3 innings while allowing six runs, five earned, on eight hits and three walks, was the Padres didn't really knock him around.
He was bled to death by bloops, flares and seeing-eye grounders after starting strong. He struck out the side in the first inning.
Yet it was just the second time he had failed to go four innings in consecutive starts. The last time? His rookie season of 2007.
That was when he was a pure power pitcher, blowing hitters away with filthy fastballs. Now he is relying on trickery and a changeup.
Lincecum needs his confidence back as much as he needs to find the strike zone. Otherwise, the Giants' hopes of reaching the playoffs are as lost as he is at the moment.
(Contact Paul Gutierrez at gutierrezp(at)sacbee.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit Sacramento Bee
