DETROIT — Tim Lincecum made $18 million this season and is due $22 million next. He is a two-time Cy Young winner just two years removed from being the MVP of the first World Series win in San Francisco Giants history.
He is transcendent, more than just a baseball star. He is a Tim Burton character come to life, frail yet eerie, with the nickname to match: The Freak.
But now he also has a 2012 that was grotesque, his 5.18 ERA the worst in the National League in the last three years for a qualified starter.
In so many ways Lincecum is Alex Rodriguez: spectacularly rich, successful, famous beyond the contours of a baseball field and even the owner of a catchy nickname. He also lost his job in the postseason.
But this is where the stories of A-Rod and Lincecum — and the Yankees and Giants — diverge.
Lincecum has done more with a lesser role while those asked to fill in for a superstar have done so brilliantly. Ryan Vogelsong found himself in the same sentence with Christy Mathewson and the San Francisco rotation, sans Lincecum, was drawing postseason comparisons to the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers staff with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen.
If nothing else, the Tigers’ collapse against the Giants following their dominance of the Yankees in the ALCS shows how matchups and momentum can create such lopsided results at this time of year. So the Yankees should not overreact to their sweep. Nevertheless, the Lincecum/Giants situation does offer lessons for these Yankees, in part rekindling elements of the Joe Torre dynasty years, namely about shared burden and serene leadership.
Look, if Rodriguez would have hit in a reduced role or been picked up by those around him, you wouldn’t be reading this sentence. Instead, the Rodriguez soap opera heightened tension around a team always burdened with championship-or-bust weight, and the edgy Joe Girardi is just not well-equipped to defuse the anxiety.
The unease around a roster is not diminished by calling the press box to tell the public address announcer not to mention Rodriguez’s name when someone pinch-hits for him. The cover-up, as so often is the case, is worse than the crime. And why even treat it like a crime?
Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who is from the Torre genre of managing, has such “a knack of using players correctly” and fostering internal trust, in the words of general manager Brian Sabean, he could keep the most expensive pitcher in team history, Barry Zito, off the postseason roster during the 2010 championship run and then replace Lincecum with Zito in the rotation this time around, yet not lose the ability and goodwill of either. Zito, as a starter, and Lincecum, in relief, have been Giant weapons this postseason.
“He didn’t waver on going to the bullpen,” Bochy said of Lincecum. “He said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to go there and help this team move forward.’ ”
Keep in mind that during the 1996 title season — among other things — Torre benched Tino Martinez three times in the World Series and pinch-hit for Paul O’Neill four times during those playoffs. Those Yankees dynasty teams thrived, in part, because no one was viewed as The Man, as bigger than the team or individually responsible for success or failure. Thus, the pressure was distributed throughout the club rather than resting on one person.
In the four Yankees title years, no player hit more than 30 homers. Five different pitchers — Roger Clemens, David Cone, Orlando Hernandez, Andy Pettitte and David Wells — started playoff Game 1s and the team felt powerfully about each of them.
This is what the Giants are enjoying now, a sense of shared spirit, responsibility and confidence. If the Yankees are looking for a lesson moving forward, it is to see the Giants did not become a Freak Show even while de-emphasizing their most famous player.
Ex-Yanks on top of World
Besides the two participants, the team best represented at this World Series is the worst Yankees squad of the past 99 years.
The 1990 Yankees went 67-95 for a .414 winning percentage, the lowest since the franchise had a .377 mark in 1913. On the next-to-last day of that season, the 1990 Yankees won their final game, 4-1 over Detroit. Roberto Kelly led off, Steve Balboni hit fifth, Hensley Meulens sixth and Dave Righetti earned his 36th save.
Today, Kelly (first base), Meulens (hitting) and Righetti (pitching) are Giants coaches and Balboni is a scout — just as all four were two years ago when the franchise won it all. Giants general manager Brian Sabean, the Yankees’ director of scouting in 1990, hired all of them. Sabean’s most important Giants lieutenant, Dick Tidrow, was a special assignment scout for the 1990 Yankees.
Sabean also had been instrumental in drafting Pat Kelly in the eighth round in 1988. Kelly didn’t make his Yankees debut until 1991, but he also has been at the World Series. He has lived full time in Australia for the past 12 years and serves as a liaison between the winter league there and the major leagues.
Flushing away Pagan’s prime
“Everyone saw the skills.” That was manager Terry Collins talking about Angel Pagan. Yet the Mets gave up on that tool shed and, in arguably the worst move of Sandy Alderson’s administration, traded Pagan to the Giants last offseason for Andres Torres and Ramon Ramirez.
Torres and Ramirez bombed as Mets. Pagan, meanwhile, performed well for the Giants, particularly in the aftermath of Melky Cabrera’s 50-game suspension. He has become an interesting free agent, though probably beyond the price range of the Mets, who need a center fielder just like the one they traded.
Pagan was a productive for the Mets in 2009-10, but struggled in 2011 on offense, defense (which really surprised Collins) and with his health. But there was more. The Mets wondered about his toughness, baseball IQ and if there were a prima donna lurking inside him. Collins actually wonders if replacing a player he idolized, Carlos Beltran, as the center fielder made Pagan press.
“Could he have done this in New York?” Collins asked rhetorically when reached by phone. “I don’t know any reason he couldn’t have. He showed us all of this. In fact [former GM] Omar [Minaya] said [after the 2010 season] that it will be interesting to see if he can continue this for us.”
He didn’t in 2011, and Minaya’s successor, Alderson, made the ill-fated trade.