Remembering Tim Lincecum and the Good Times: His Best Performances
#1: October 7th, 2010
In San Francisco’s first postseason game since 2003, when they lost in the division series, three games to one, to the eventual-World Series champion Florida Marlins, Lincecum got the call. That would, of course, make this Lincecum’s first taste of postseason action. With the lights brighter than they’ve ever been, Lincecum shined even brighter.
He was phenomenal on October 7th. The very first batter of the game, Omar Infante, tagged Lincecum for a leadoff double, but he responded by retiring the next nine he faced, including six by strikeout.
To start the fourth inning, Jason Heyward drew a walk on five pitches. Lincecum responded in resounding fashion again by retiring the next 10 batters.
With one out in the seventh inning, Brian McCann hit a double on the first pitch he saw. Holding a slim 1-0 lead, Lincecum would retire the next eight batters in a row, tallying four more strikeouts. All in all, the one run was all he needed, as he threw a complete game shutout and racked up 14 strikeouts to break the franchise postseason record.
This was all the more impressive because in August of 2010, a month before the postseason, we saw that Lincecum was human, and not actually a tiny pitching cyborg. In August, Lincecum had the first real prolonged struggles of his career. He went 0-5 and posted a 7.82 ERA and 1.816 WHIP, making it the worst month of his career to that point.
That didn’t affect Linceum, as he pitched extremely well in September, and carried it right over into October. This was the catalyst of all the Giants’ success, the first of 34 wins over the next five years in the postseason, the first game of the birth of the Giants’ Dynasty. And for that, we thank Tim Lincecum.