After today's awful showing (4.0 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 1 K, 4 BB), it's inevitable that we'll start hearing Tim Lincecum's June compared to his August of 2010. Over his last three starts, Lincecum has now gone 15.1 IP, allowing 16 earned runs.
But before we do so, let's acknowledge that Lincecum's June 1 start was not bad. He went 6.1 innings with nine strikeouts and zero walks. Unfortunately, 50% of balls put in play against him went for hits (compared to his career BABIP of 29.5%), and he only stranded 62.5% of baserunners (compared to his career LOB% of 75.3%). So what was actually a very good start is being perceived as a bad one.
And this is all being clumped together to fit the narrative of "Tim Lincecum struggling mightily."
In reality, he's had two bad starts back-to-back:
June 6: 5.0 IP, 5 K, 3 BB, 4 ER (5.35 FIP)
June 11: 4.0 IP, 1 K, 4 BB, 7 ER (5.45 FIP)
It's unusual for Lincecum to have a couple bad back-to-back starts, sure. But not something so unprecedented that we should really start to worry.
On May 20 and May 26 of 2010, for example, Lincecum tossed 9.2 IP in which he totaled 11 K, 10 BB, and allowed 11 earned runs. And guess what? In June, he was back to his usual self again.
Let's wait before we start alluding to Lincecum's horrific 2010 August, and let's not worry so much about Timmy -- for the time being, at least.
