Pittsburgh Pirates may see potential in Tim Lincecum

In his nine year career with the San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum put together a very impressive resume. Since his debut in 2007, he has been a part of three World Series teams (2010, 2012, 2014), won two Cy Young awards (2008, 2009) and led the NL in strikeouts (2008, 2009, 2010). He also happened to be the first pitcher to ever throw no hitters in back to back years against the same team when he blanked the San Diego Padres in 2013 and 2014. The only other pitcher with multiple World Series wins, Cy Young awards and no hitters? Sandy Koufax.

With a list of achievements like that, it’s hard to fathom that pitcher of Lincecum’s caliber could find himself looking for a new team in 2016. His 2015 campaign ended in September when he had season ending hip surgery and with his two year contract extension with the Giants coming to an end, he will become a free agent heading into 2016. While it is still possible for Lincecum to sign another contract with the San Francisco Giants, there is a decent chance they will decide to move on. Given that Ray Searage has been able to work his magic and turn the likes of Francisco Liriano, Edinson Volquez, J.A. Happ and others around and make them successful again, Lincecum is a perfect candidate to come to the Pittsburgh Pirates and see if his career can be turned around.

From 2008-2011, Lincecum was one of the best pitchers on the planet. As previously mentioned, he won his to Cy Young awards during this period. He recorded three consecutive seasons of 200+ strikeouts (in order) of 265, 261, 231 and 220. His ERAs in that time period were (in order), 2.62, 2.48, 3.43 and 2.74.

2012 was the year where Lincecum began to struggle. He saw his ERA balloon, ending the season at 5.18. This was also the first season he surrendered more than 100 earned runs, giving up 107 in just 186 innings of work. As a point of reference, in the four preceding seasons Lincecum pitched over 200 innings in each and the most runs he surrendered in any one season was 81. The next three seasons saw him register ERAs of 4.37, 4.74 and 4.13. ERA, similar to a win loss record, is not the best metric to evaluate the effectiveness of a pitcher, so there are other areas to look at to find out what is wrong with Lincecum.

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Prior to 2012, Lincecum only had one season where he gave up more than eight hits per nine innings pitched (8.2 in 2010). Since 2012, his hits per nine innings have been 8.9, 8.4, 8.9 and 8.8. Besides hits, Lincecum has been giving up more home runs in recent years compared to the beginning of his career. In the last four seasons he has given up an average of one home run per nine innings, as opposed to a mark of almost half of that in his first five years.

Lincecum’s drop in strikeouts may be the most alarming aspect of his decline in the last few years. In 2008 during the season when he won his first Cy Young award, Lincecum averaged 10.5 punchouts per nine innings. Each season since then, Lincecum has registered a lower K/9 than the season before, including 7.1 in 2015. This is by no means a terrible number of strikeouts, but it’s a far cry from what Lincecum did at the start of his career.

So what has caused Lincecum see such a sharp decline over the last few years? One of the main culprits is a decrease in velocity. Over at Fangraphs, they have velocity charts that show the velocity range and average velocity of a pitcher. But looking at just the last three years, it’s evident that Lincecum has lost a decent amount of velocity, especially on his fastball. In 2013 he was sitting around 90 MPH for the most part and could occasionally even hit close to 95. By 2015 he was lucky if he was able to crack 90 MPH and was usually in the high 80s.

Lincecum’s slider also saw a decrease in range that he was able to throw the pitch. In 2013 he was throwing the pitch in the 80-85 MPH range the majority of the time, occasionally hitting above 85 and below 80. But in 2015, not only was his velocity down on the pitch, but the range in which he could throw it was also much smaller than before.

It will be interesting to see how team’s approach Lincecum this offseason. He was absolutely one of the most dominant pitchers in the game from 2008-2011 but then saw most of his numbers go up due to a significant loss in velocity. He will only be 31 years old when the 2016 season begins, so he has time to turn his career around. Many teams may shy away from him due to how unpredictable he has been in the last few years, but he should definitely be on the radar for the Pirates in the next few months. Searage has been able to fix guys like Liriano, Happ and Volquez, and none of those guys had the level of success that Lincecum did in early stages of his career.

His last contract was for 2 years, $35 million and he will almost assuredly not get that much money this offseason. But it may be worth it for the Pirates to check in on him and see if a one or two year contract of $8-11 million would be enough to bring him to Pittsburgh. There should be competition for the back end of the rotation and Lincecum would be a decent option if they can get him at a reasonable price.