Major League Baseball

Lincecum, Halladay a contrast in styles

Published Oct. 14, 2010 4:53 p.m. ET

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Ken Rosenthal

The coolest thing is, they’re so different.

Phillies right-hander Roy Halladay and Giants righty Tim Lincecum do not look alike, act alike or pitch alike. But on Saturday night in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series (FOX, 7:30 p.m. ET), they will face each other in one of the most highly anticipated pitching matchups in postseason history.

NFL quarterbacks, NBA point guards, NHL defensemen – line ‘em up on a street corner and they all would look pretty much the same. The beauty of baseball is that players come in all shapes and sizes. Halladay and Lincecum are a pitching yin and yang – “complementary opposites,” according to the Wikipedia definition, “within the greater whole.”

Remember when chicks dug the long ball? In this, the Year of the Pitcher, they dig the fastball. Each of the four remaining teams boasts a dominant ace; the ALCS features two other complementary opposites, Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia and Rangers lefty Cliff Lee. Gone are the bloated offensive statistics from the Steroid Era; 1-0 and 2-1 scores are the new norm.

So now comes the countdown to Saturday. Halladay will again take the mound at Citizens Bank Park, where in his last start he threw only the second no-hitter in postseason history. Lincecum will follow, seeking to build upon his own recent masterpiece, a two-hit shutout in which he struck out 14 and walked just one.

Both performances marked playoff debuts. Dan Rosenheck wrote in a New York Times blog that Lincecum actually produced the more impressive complete-game shutout, triggering a brief, spirited, only-in-baseball debate. Most baseball people are in agreement on the larger question, preferring Halladay, the favorite for this year’s NL Cy Young Award, to Lincecum, winner of the last two.

“In one given game, Lincecum might outpitch him,” one National League general manager said. “Over a whole season, no chance.”

“Halladay is the best pitcher in baseball,” another GM said. “And the gap is bigger than people think.”

For now, at least.

In baseball as in life, the only constant in change.

Timothy LeRoy Lincecum, 26, is seven years younger than Harry Leroy Halladay, blessed with enough time to build a comparable or even greater body of work. Funny thing, though: The difference in the two pitchers’ ages seems even greater. Halladay, stone-faced and intensely focused, is an old-school throwback. Lincecum is a free spirit, a new-age wonder.

Just look at them: Halladay is 6-foot-6, 230 pounds, resembling a large, bearded lumberjack. Lincecum is 5-11, 170, long-haired and skinny, looking for all the world like the teenager next door.

Halladay’s nickname is “Doc,” a bow to Doc Holliday, a gunfighter of the Old West. Lincecum is known as “The Freak,” for his unusual throwing motion -- and the downright freakish reality that someone his size can throw a baseball so hard.

Lincecum, though, doesn’t throw as hard as he once did – his average fastball velocity dropped from 94 to 92.4 to 91.3 over the past three seasons, according to the PitchFx data at Fangraphs.com. Giants officials publicly questioned Lincecum’s conditioning in August, when he had his worst month in the majors, going 0-5 with a 7.82 ERA. Lincecum changed his routine between starts, and went 5-1 with a 1.94 ERA in September.

Halladay’s conditioning never is an issue; his work ethic is considered the gold standard in the sport. Six-and-a-half hours before Game 3 of the Division Series in Cincinnati, he could be seen running in the outfield. Most of his teammates were not even at the stadium yet. None had thrown a no-hitter four days before.

That’s Halladay, who ran cross-country at Arvada (Co.) H.S. to strengthen his legs. The Blue Jays took him out of high school with the 17th overall pick in the 1995 draft, but his path to stardom was not nearly as smooth as that of Lincecum, a native of Bellevue, Wa., whom the Giants selected out of the University of Washington with the No. 10 pick in 2006.

Coming out of college, Lincecum pitched only 62 2/3 innings in the minor leagues. Halladay pitched 638, including a stint in 2001 when the Blue Jays demoted him from the majors for a three-month stint at Class A, the lowest level of the minors. He essentially was starting over. The Jays broke him down and remade him as a pitcher.

The Halladay of today, one scout says, is a “surgeon,” a pitching maestro who throws a wide variety of pitches — cutters, sinkers, curveballs, changeups — hardly any of them straight. Lincecum, by contrast, relies heavily on his fastball and changeup, though lately he has made greater use of his slider. “He is still really good,” another scout says, “but without a mid- to upper-90s fastball, he isn’t the same.”

Baseball people long have feared that Lincecum’s violent delivery would lead to a major arm injury, but in each of his three full seasons, he has thrown at least 212 innings. To achieve sustained excellence – Halladay-type excellence – he might indeed need to work harder. The Phillies’ Roy Oswalt, a pitcher with a similar build, said as much earlier this season. But that is a concern for another day.

Halladay and Lincecum. Lincecum and Halladay. On Saturday night, they will take turns on the mound at the Citizens Bank Park, “Doc” and “The Freak,” pitching in the biggest game of their respective careers. Complementary opposites, coming from seemingly different baseball planets. Yin and yang, going for it all.

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