Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Tim Lincecum wins National League Cy Young award

Tim Lincecum has won the National League Cy Young award. This honor was richly deserved, and Lincecum is absolutely a pleasure to watch pitch. He's going to be one of the best for a very long time.
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4 comments:

GFreak said...

I'm so happy that the writers recognized Timmy's performance. It's hard to win an award like this on such a dismal team. Consider this -- if the bullpen had preserved all of the leads he had when he left the game, he would have been VERY close to winning the Triple Crown. I hope (as an SFG fan) that they do the right thing.
As far as your comment about him being dominant for a long time -- I hope you're right. My brother, the strength and condition coach for {a prominent baseball agent and his clients} (yes, that one) has some concerns about what Tim's mechanics will do to his body over time...

6:49 PM, November 11, 2008
Mason said...

The level of detail your brother has about that kind of stuff is far beyond what I am able to tell (obviously), so I wasn't aware of this. Of course, Kevin Appier was a "rotator cuff surgery waiting to happen" (that is a direct quote from scouts from when he was younger), and even with his delivery, he was awesome for over a decade. Granted, we get to be spoiled by people who are awesome longer than that and it remains to be seen how this kind of long-term durability goes.

1:20 AM, November 12, 2008
GFreak said...

Here's an interesting tidbit about Tim's mechanics: his father, in discussion with the UW coach before Tim agreed to attend and play there, made the coach promise to NOT change his mechanics.
His delivery does appear quite smooth, which is generally a good thing. However, a slow motion observation still shows the violence of his delivery -- and specifically, the very high torques and forces applied throughout his joints. Note this -- I'm bigger than him. He's a bit taller (an inch or two) but my playing weight at Tech was easily the same as if not more than his. For him to generate the kind of velocity that he does necessarily puts extraordinary strains on his entire body, but especially his rotator cuff and elbow.
Once again, he has never showed any signs of injury, wear, or pain, but his delivery is so unconventional that either he will end up having career-shortening or -ending injury/surgery in a couple of years OR there will be a large number of smaller pitchers appearing all of a sudden... I sure hope it's the latter!

7:35 AM, November 12, 2008
Mason said...

He is unusually small, but there has been some success with small pitchers---with the Astros having much less reluctance to draft them the recent notable situation that comes to mind. (Granted, I don't know about the mechanics of people like Oswalt and Wagner versus Lincecum.) Pedro of course is small, though my understanding is that his mechanics were mild (though of course he did ultimately break down, but after many years).

There is also the truism with pitchers that you can never know. I know it's true for non-pitchers to some degree too, but pitchers are weird.

8:42 AM, November 12, 2008

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