Tim Lincecum on His Hip, Curveball, and a Comeback

Tim Lincecum used to be freakishly good. He no longer is. Hampered by hip woes, the 32-year-old right-hander went from winning Cy Young awards and tossing no-hitters to the precipice of pitching oblivion. His velocity down and his ERA up, he succumbed to surgery last September.

He’s on the comeback trail, but not with the team he helped win three World Series. The former Giant signed with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in May and debuted with his new club in mid-June. His performances have been underwhelming. In four starts, the once-overpowering righty has allowed 29 hits in 18 innings. His fastball is averaging a pedestrian 89 mph.

The extent to which Lincecum can return to his old form remains to be seen. His surgically-repaired hip appears to be holding up, and his damaged psyche is healing as well. He’ll likely never be an elite power pitcher again — or a power pitcher at all — but he feels he can be a productive starter. Only time will tell.

Lincecum talked about his early development as a pitcher, and his career going forward, prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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Lincecum on pitching: “When you’re younger, you don’t have a plan. You either trust your stuff or you don’t, or you just throw it and hope. I always trusted my stuff. My fastball didn’t always play, but my curveball made my fastball better. That’s what I could execute. Some guys have an idea of how they can pitch — what pitches they should throw in what counts — but guys like me just end up throwing the ball and trusting it. There’s an aspect of that even at this level. You have a plan, but you’re basically throwing the baseball. It all depends on how well you can execute.

“I started throwing a curveball really early. My dad’s philosophy behind a curveball is that if you’re throwing it correctly, you’re not going to get hurt. I think most people don’t want their kids to throw breaking balls because they don’t have the body awareness and the control to do it. I was fortunate in that throwing a curveball was almost easier for me than throwing a fastball.

“My dad was really finicky on me repeating my mechanics. When I was younger, I was throwing more over the top — my arm was higher — and that kind of allowed me to throw a curveball. My body allowed me to do it. For me, it wasn’t, ‘Hey, I’m going to throw my fastball as hard as I can.’ You don’t think ‘Throw your curveball as hard as you can.’ You think ‘Throw it and let it break.’

“As I got older, my curveball changed a little. It became less 2-to-8 and more 12-6. I started to develop other pitches, and to manipulate other pitches. Thinking pulling down on your changeup gets you thinking pulling down on a curveball. Thinking pulling down through a fastball is the same as pulling down through a curveball. The arm angle starts to change just a little. As a kid, you come around pitches a lot more. You flip them up there, trying to make them break more. When you get older, it’s more about the execution and knowing what the pitches are going to do. You’re not hoping anymore.

“When I was a kid, I was undersized and wasn’t going to throw all that hard. If I tried, it was probably going to work against me, so I had to learn to work with what I had. That’s kind of what I’m doing right now, you know — working with what I have. I’m not throwing 92-94-96 anymore, so I need to (unintelligible word) my fastball and make sure my offspeed stuff is good.

“I’m going back to trusting my hip, trusting myself within a game atmosphere, and knowing I’m going to find that groove again. That’s with my old mechanics, the ones I had before I started to kind of falter because of the degenerative hip.

“The mechanics I’ve resorted to the last few years have been my body trying to find the easy way out. Because things were going backwards from the standpoint of my hip, I was taking a shorter, more abbreviated, kind of delivery. That’s basically when my stuff slowed down. I don’t want to take the easy way out. I want to take the better way out, and for me that’s the right mechanics and developing a lot of torque, using my whole body.

“I also have to pitch smarter, but that’s what goes into being a veteran pitcher. I think that would happen even if I still had my best stuff. Having a plan is what being a veteran starter and elongating your career is all about. Hitters have a plan against a pitcher — they know what you want to do — and it always goes back to ‘There’s no one right way to pitch a game.’ It’s always a chess game.

“I got a lot of my pitching philosophies from my dad, who pitched semi-pro. His idea was breaking balls and fastballs up and in. He liked to embarrass people and I like to do that, too. We always talked about how to get through a game with what you’ve got that day — it’s not always going to be the same — but he still has the mindset that I can pitch the way I used to, going up and in and using my breaking ball. I think he’s right. It’s a matter of just trusting it.

“I’ve been taught to work down ever since I got into college. Down and away fastball, down and away fastball, work down in the zone, work down in the zone. That’s always been implemented from a pitching coach standpoint. It’s true that you get hurt less down there, but I’ve always gotten away with the other side of that plate, which is fastballs up and curveballs down.

“You never want to become one-dimensional and just think down and away — not unless you’re a sinkerballer. You never want to throw a sinkerball up. Down and away is always going to be a go-to, but if you start living there, you can get hurt just as much as a guy who doesn’t. You have to execute pitches on all parts of the plate.

“I pay attention to scouting reports. I want an idea of what the guy is doing right now, what his hot zones are and what to kind of avoid. But I’m never going to fall away from my strengths. If it leads into their strength, I think my strength will beat their strength. That’s kind of always been my mindset.

“I’m working with a (sport psychologist) right now, Tom Mitchell, who is out of the Bay Area. I thought it was necessary. I felt like, at times, the game and the lifestyle of this game — what I was going through on the field — became a little bit overwhelming. I needed some help dealing with that, coping with things and moving on from what I’ve gone through up until this point. It keeps me grounded and I never feel like I’m alone.

“What ended up happening — my dad would even tell you this — is that when I got frustrated, I’d kind of use him as my sounding board. The sounding board is more or less a venting post for me, and I kind of got tired of wearing out my girlfriend and my dad. I needed somebody else to give that stuff to, somebody who I could get a constructive perspective from.

“(Pitching-wise) I don’t have a lot of people telling me what I need to be doing. They mostly just present options. It’s never an ‘I know better’ kind of situation. It’s really just people presenting me with options they think would benefit me the most. Mentally, that works better for me than being told what to do.

“No one has ever presented (you can’t be a power pitcher anymore). I don’t know why they haven’t said that. I’ve kind of said it to myself. I know my stuff isn’t playing that way. A power pitcher is someone who can dominate with his fastball and right now I’m not doing that. I’m confident that I can pitch, though. I can get it back.”