Major League Baseball

Is he experienced? No, but he's big-time

Published Oct. 10, 2010 10:11 p.m. ET

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Experience? Playoff experience? Big Time Timmy Jim's got your playoff experience right here, pal.

Tim Lincecum, pitching in his very first major-league playoff game Thursday night, struck out 14 fourteen XIV catorce Atlanta Braves and pitched a complete-game two-hitter, winning 1-0.

The Giants scored a run in the fourth, and with that large cushion, Lincecum was able to kick back, relax and cruise home.

Just before that one run was painfully eked out, one writer in the press box began writing his game story early: "Matt Cain's 17th inning home run ... "

Fortunately for the Giants, Cain's bat wasn't needed. All the thunder they needed came in the form of Cody Ross' two-out fluke single in the fourth inning, scoring Buster Posey.

One measly run. But when Lincecum is dealing, "1" is a crooked number.

Lincecum's stats Thursday were stupid. Twelve of his 14 K's were swinging. The Braves swung at and missed 33 pitches on the night. So of Lincecum's 75 strikes out of 119 pitches, 33 were just plain old misses. That's a crazy number, just wrong.

When he struck out the side in the second, giving him five consecutive strikeouts, all nine strikes were swing-throughs.

And this was against full-grown adult professional hitting people.

Lincecum's best game ever? Nobody else would say that.

Lincecum said, "I don't know, that's hard to judge what 'better' would be. ... As far as shutouts go, I think that's up there with one of my better ones, if I had to rate."

Bruce Bochy called it "one of the best efforts I've ever seen."

One of the best? LOL.

Let's put it out there: Yes. This was Lincecum's "Starry Night."

Come on! This was his best game, easily, considering the circumstances. Not even close. Fourteen 7 X 2 punchouts? Thirty-three swing-throughs? Retiring 18 of the last 19 batters?

At least Sergio Romo was willing to step up and do a little country hardball gushing over Lincecum.

Asked if he'd ever seen Lincecum that impressive, Romo said, "I don't think I've seen anybody that impressive, first pitch to last. We all felt like fans in the dugout watching that."

Furthur submitted for your vote: Which pitcher in this year's playoffs has made the most impressive playoff debut - Lincecum or Roy Halladay?

To take nothing away from Halladay, the vote here goes to the Freak.

In his postgame interview, Lincecum used a term twice: "Shutdown mode."

When he gave up a double to game leadoff hitter Omar Infante, Lincecum said, he went into "shutdown mode."

What is this guy, some kind of cyborg? Is there a switch on the back of his head to activate the stun-phasers?

Is that what Posey was flipping when he went to the mound to talk to Lincecum?

"Things feel like they're in the right place," Lincecum said. Nobody in the Braves' clubhouse was saying anything like that.

Through the first six innings, almost all of Lincecum's strikeouts came on breaking balls that started around the thigh and dropped to shoe-top level. Over the last three innings, his strikeout pitch was the belt-high or higher, 92-mph fastball.

"His breaking stuff is always out of the strike zone," groused Braves manager Bobby Cox. "Easier said than done - don't swing at it."

Lincecum kind of shrugged off the question of what was working.

"All the pitches were working," he said.

Lincecum's fastball, especially early, was almost always high and out of the strike zone. That wasn't by design. That was Lincecum not quite having the speedball under control.

But as Posey said, "The high fastball ended up playing into our hands."

In the first inning, when Lincecum got two strikes on No. 3 batter Derrek Lee, the fans rose to their feet, then cheered the strikeout. But strangely, during the middle innings, when Lincecum would get two strikes on a batter, the fans were sitting. Were they stupefied by Lincecum's performance?

Folks, there is a rule in the playoffs: Lincecum pitching, two strikes on a hitter, all hands on deck. Everyone up. If your grandma needs a hand getting to her feet, you help her up.

Because this is history. Nobody does this.

The Giants' franchise record for strikeouts in a playoff game, before Thursday night, was 10.

It was not your normal game. Shortstop Juan Uribe threw out Infante leading off the ninth, and that was the only Brave thrown out by an infielder all night, not counting two comebackers to Lincecum.

This was the same Lincecum who struggled like crazy all August, admitted he was way off, physically and mentally. Someday he'll tell the story of how he went from a lost-in-space basket case to an in-your-face ace.

In his previous start Lincecum had 11 strikeouts. For a guy who was out of gas a month ago, his conditioning called into question, doubting himself and seeking help from his pitching coach and whoever else had a theory, Lincecum has made a nice comeback.

With a little more experience ...

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