Should the Pittsburgh Pirates kick the tires on Tim Lincecum?

Two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum is planning a comeback. Should the Pittsburgh Pirates kick the tires on the former San Francisco Giants hurler?

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a reputation for rehabbing “broken” pitchers in recent years. Ray Searage and company have wrung fantastic pitching performances from A.J. Burnett, J.A. Happ and Edinson Volquez, just to name a few.

Now, another name has popped up from the scrap heap. Former two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum is preparing for a comeback, currently training at Driveline:

https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/943253238937030657

Though no reports have linked the Pittsburgh Pirates to attending the showcase that Lincecum to date, there is a good chance that the club would send some type of delegation to the showcase. Even if it would amount to nothing more than due diligence, the club must still work to find value wherever it can, in whatever form it takes.

Without yet being able to see if Lincecum has rebuilt his mechanics and thus put himself on the track to becoming an effective pitcher again, should the Pirates seriously consider bringing Lincecum in?

Career-to-date

table courtesy of Baseball Reference

The case for

• Despite losing his effectiveness beginning in 2012, Lincecum maintained encouraging peripherals in some key areas, even throughout his comeback attempt with the Angels in 2016. His contact rate of 75.9 percent in 2016 was not far from his career 75.2 percent rate. His swinging strike percentage told the same story — 10.6 percent in 2016 was just a tick below his 11 percent career mark — and he induced soft contact at 16.9 percent clip, 0.4 points below his career marks. Of course, there are some other peripherals that are equally as ugly. We’ll review those below.
• Lincecum has experience out of the bullpen from the Giants’ World Series run in 2014. Though it will have been more than three seasons since that time, the Pittsburgh Pirates might feel more comfortable rolling the dice on Lincecum if they feel comfortable that he can transition to a bullpen role if needed.
• As seen above, Lincecum looks to be in tremendous shape, and a year removed from the game might have done him some mental good as well.

The case against

• About those bad peripherals. They are awful. By they I mean the First-Strike percentage, which was down to 49.5 percent in 2016 from his career 55.7 percent rate. I also am talking about his hard-hit rate, which ballooned to 41.3 percent in 2016.
• Lincecum’s walk rate — always a bit high for his career at 3.92 BB/9 — rose sharply in each of his last three seasons, all the way to 5.40 from 3.46 as recently as 2013. His FIP has been at 4.0 or higher every year since 2012, and his K/9 has slowly dwindled each year since his high water-mark 10.42 rate in 2009. In his last season it sat at 7.51. How much the hip injury and others may have affected him in his last major league action is unknown, but by all accounts it played a major factor here.
• LIncecum is simply not the pitcher he was during his Cy Young heyday. No longer able to rely on his four seam fastball — which has averaged less than 90 mph in 2015 through 2016 — he must no rely on his other pitches — he trows a slider, sinker and split finger fastball in addition to a now-seldom used curve — to greater effect. The only problem there is that those secondary pitches are lit up, with most getting lit up in terms of slugging percentage against:

   

  

   

Still worth a look

Even though we’ve presented both sides of the coin here with Lincecum’s most recent MLB performance, the Pittsburgh Pirates should still attend the showcase and see what they find. If Lincecum has a clean bill of health and regains even a bit of velocity, he might be an intriguing low-cost option for starting pitching depth.