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Jimenez unbeatable in Giants' loss
By Morris Phillips May 31, 2010 |
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In baseball, momentum is today’s starting pitcher. On Monday, Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez was like a boulder hurtling to the Pac Bell Park playing surface from the top row of seats in the stadium’s view level. Jimenez dispatched the Giants with the greatest of ease, allowing four hits in a complete game shutout, bringing the Giants four-game win streak to a screeching halt. The dominating right-hander became baseball’s first 10-game winner and extended his scoreless innings streak to 26. “This is just another fabulous start,” Colorado manager Jim Tracy said of Jimenez. Tracy, normally effusive, spoke in fits and broken sentences as he attempted to squeeze all the superlatives describing his pitcher into a tidy postgame statement. “First of all he’s gained a full handle on how to be very efficient with his pitches, and that’s directly due to fastball command. And the other thing is, he’s always mindful of who it is that he’s up against.” In this instance, the Giants’ Tim Lincecum, who pitched better than his recent disappointing outings, but not anywhere near good enough to win against Jimenez. When the two-time Cy Young winner allowed Clint Barmes to single in a pair of runs in the second inning on a ground ball that took a bad hop off the pitcher’s mound before scooting into shallow centerfield, Lincecum was essentially cooked. Lincecum’s fate was sealed after he allowed just one hit in the inning, and six hits in an outing that concluded in the sixth. But you could almost see the loss coming before it arrived, and surely the sellout crowd of better than 42,000 saw it. Never has a two-time Cy Young winner with a 5-1 record created such an uneasiness among his home fans. With every pitch Lincecum threw in the deciding second inning, the fans displayed their emotions. Hearty cheers for strikes, soft moans for balls, and audible relief for every recorded out. Prior to Barmes’ pivotal hit, Lincecum walked the first two batters, then after two recorded outs, he pitched dismissively as Ian Stewart alertly stole second base. The walks and stolen base were reoccurring themes of the Freak’s poor May. And when Barmes delivered, the crowd felt defeated, as if its steady encouragement, a necessity for their favorite pitcher to turn it around, had gone for naught. Lincecum walked five on the day, the fourth straight start that he has walked at least five batters, and he allowed Stewart the stolen base, the 12th stolen base he’s allowed in 2010, the most allowed by a pitcher in the National League. Dating back to last year, Lincecum has allowed 16 consecutive stolen bases, meaning that he’ll continue to face aggressive baserunners until he establishes that he can slow them. Before Friday’s game, Lincecum worked with coaches on his slide step pickoff move, but come gametime it didn’t translate. On Stewart’s stolen base and in a situation later in the game with a runner breaking from second on a play that resulted in a flyball out, Lincecum paid little attention to runners at critical junctures. “I try not to sit too much on the negative. There’s too much negative going on right now,” Lincecum said as a battery of reporters surrounded him as if they were doctors trying to diagnose a patient. “I feel kind of out of sync,” he continued. “This slump is a little bit longer than I was hoping it would be.” Through the first two months of the season, a bunch of pitchers are having stellar seasons: Roy Halladay, Barry Zito, Johnny Cueto, Chris Carpenter and Phil Hughes among them. But quite simply, none of them has it like Jimenez has it—in form or in record. The towering righthander is simply off the best season start of any pitcher since Juan Marichal in 1966. In eleven starts, Jimenez has ten wins, including a no-no on April 17, one loss on two hits allowed, along with a microscopic 0.78 ERA. Jimenez hasn’t allowed more than two runs in any of his starts. Jimenez gifted the Giants a threat in their half of the second inning courtesy of a walk and a wild pitch that got Aubrey Huff to second base. But then Jimenez was simply unfair. His slider on a 3-2 pitch to Juan Uribe skirted the lower outside corner of the strike zone at 99 mph. His elevated--and unhittable—fastball to Buster Posey on didn’t give the youngster an opportunity to call the elevator or cancel his swing. Along with the four-game win streak, the Giants came in with a combined 31 hits in their last two games, and managed just four hits against Jimenez. Buster Posey, who made his season debut over the weekend with six hits in nine at-bats, went 0 for 3 meekly, seeing just eight Jimenez pitches before he was lifted in a seventh inning double switch. Giants’ broadcaster Mike Krukow says Jimenez has a combination of velocity and movement that is extremely rare and obviously deflating for opposing hitters. Tracy has noticed that Jimenez, hasn’t shown a quantum leap in the quality of his pitches this year, but he no longer leaves the door open, shutting down opponents once he’s given a run or two. Tracy also added that Jimenez continues to work tirelessly, and his desire to be the league’s best pitcher won’t be derailed by a lapse in his work ethic. Timmy, look out, there’s company at the top of the heap. |
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