This may easily be my most prescient game preview of the season:
But [Lincoln]’s facing Gorzo and Gorzo’s a lefty and the Pirates really just don’t do lefties, so unless he’s got a shutout in him, he’s probably going to be winless in his sixth start, too.
Brad Lincoln will not enter his sixth start winless because he threw seven shutout innings at the Cubs today. He did just about everything that he hadn’t done in his first four starts today. His K/BB rate before today was 1, today he struck out six and walked just one. In addition, he didn’t give up a lot of hits (just four in seven innings) and he kept the ball on the ground (9 groundouts to 3 flyouts). That’s a recipe for success in the Majors.
Since I didn’t see the game, the first thing I went to check was Lincoln’s PitchFX, just to see if anything stood out. Lo and behold, Lincoln threw his curveball (generally considered to be his best pitch) for 9 swings and misses in 36 pitches this afternoon. For context, he threw 88 curveballs in his first four starts and hitters swung and missed at just four of them. I’m uncertain if it was because the Cubs chased it more today — his strike rate on the curve was about 70%, which he matched or exceeded in the two starts prior to this one, so that might not be it — or if he simply had it working for him today. With my upcoming road trip I’m pretty booked for time this evening, but if I get a chance I’ll investigate this a little further.
Whatever the case was with Lincoln this afternoon, we finally got a glimpse at the guy that pitched his way into the rotation last month. And with that, the Pirates end this road trip with a road series win. And the two games they won to take this series from the Cubs were very low-scoring, but featured Lincoln’s great outing today, a very key hit from Jose Tabata on Friday, and a big sequence from Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones today. Considering where spirits were on Monday, I’d call this a pretty good series.
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