Giants Interview With RazzBall

Recently, our Giants Baseball Blog was approached by a very popular Sports site, Razzball.com, and was asked to do a short, season preview interview. We gladly obliged and here is just a brief sample from the interview. For the full thing, click here:1. For Tim Lincecum, last year the percentage of pitches a batter hit outside the strike zone was 56%, compared to 48.8% the year before. He also lost a mile on his fastball, threw his slider a lot more and his curveball a lot less. Are these causes for concern? Blips on the radar?

A: I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bit alarming. Lincecum went through a real rough stretch in August last season, before really turning it on for the stretch run and the playoffs, and the big reason for that was because he was learning how to pitch without the 95 mph fastball for the first time in his career. The reason for the drop in velocity, in my opinion, has to do with his large workload over the last 3 seasons. However, he really alleviated that concern after watching his performances in October, and although Giants fans will be watching his velocity and control very closely this spring, they are all pretty confident in their ace. A big reason for the drop in curveball and slider ratio was because of his evolving change-up, which is a pitch that really helped him out of his funk.