Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Tracking the Slider

I'm thinking about making a weekly feature about Lincecum's slider. What say you?

The first installment:

4/29 vs Rockies (known thereafter as the Gary Darling game):


In this game, Lincecum did not throw as many sliders as compared to the number thrown in his first start against the Cardinals. Out the sliders he did throw, 10 of them were to right-handed batters (the lone pitch was to Todd Helton, a lefty). The slider is becoming quite effective because it breaks down and away from righties. It doesn’t break as much as his curveball, but the extra 4 MPH compensates for downward movement. Once Tim completely masters the slider, I expect that he can easily get lefties out with it, since it breaks down and into a left-handed batter.

More information about Tim’s pitches and movement, among other goodies, on his player card provided by Josh Kalk:

Tim Lincecum's Player Card

Also, to celebrate the anniversary of Tim's arrival at the bigs: sharksrog on McCovey Chronicles has started a discussion about the origin of Tim's middle name, LeRoy. For starters, it's not pronounced LEE-roy. It's Luh-ROY. And, his name originates from "Le Roi," French for "The King." Apt, no?


All hail King Timothy (photo from Yahoo! Sports)

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