Lincecum had an 18-5 record. He was a serious candidate for the National League Cy Young Award because he made a big difference in the Giants season. Even though they finished 72-90, he won most of his games. Without him they would have had a worse record than that. Lincecum seemed to be the star of the team but you wouldn’t have guessed that by the lack of San Francisco Giants merchandise with his name on it.
He failed to have 2 good starts in a row only one time this year. He had 26 good outings. Only Johan Santana of the New York Mets had more. He had a total of 28 outings. Lincecum usually does better than the base requirements for a quality start. Baseball defines a quality start as allowing three earned runs or fewer in six innings or more. Lincecum has worked at least seven innings in 20 of his 33 starts, and he gave up more than three earned runs just six times. He had a 2.62 ERA and 227 innings. That ranks second and fourth in the Majors, respectively.
Some people think that quality starts are a bad statistic. If you look at Lincecum, he limited both left-handed and right-handed batters to a low average. Managers aren’t going to be stupid enough to fill the batting order with left handed batters against Lincecum.
The Giants only managed about 5 runs in Lincecum’s games. They got about 4 when he didn’t start.
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