by Jeremy Harness

SAN FRANCISCO–San Francisco Giant pitcher Tim Lincecum surpassed former New York Giant Carl Hubbell on the all time strikeout list on Wednesday night. Lincecum needed four strikeouts at the start of Wednesday night to pass Hubbell for fourth place on the list. Lincecum got the four and got a standing ovation for the strikeout which ended the inning.

Looking back on the career of Lincecum he won the Cy Young award in 2009 and 2010 and he had remarkably great stuff and he had some other great pitches but his location wasn’t very good but he was able to get away with it because his fastball was so good that batters had to respect that. Nowadays his fastball doesn’t top 90.

More accurately he now throws around 87-88 MPH so when you lose that much velocity your control becomes that much more important. It been a few years for Lincecum since he had command of his fastball than other pitches. What was happening hitters would sit on the change up and they would hit the snot out of it and Lincecum was getting roughed up.

This year he’s starting to figure it out he’s starting to have very good outings particularly the one on Wednesday night against the Dodgers where he throws seven strong innings and gives up only three hits. It was against a very good Dodgers lineup so when you could do that against a lineup like that you know you have your stuff going.

Lincecum is becoming more and more of a pitcher and is less of a thrower, it was very essential in that part of his career and who knows if he didn’t figure it out who knows where he would be? He may not be on the team if he didn’t show flashes of that past greatness. Lincecum is not going to get behind on pitches.

When Lincecum doesn’t have as much velocity that 90s fastball like he used to have, then you have to locate and if you don’t locate your going to get hit extremely hard. The Giants joined the ranks of the 1960, 1968, 2009, and 2012 teams for having six or more shutouts in the month of May. Thus far the Giants have six in May with back to back shutouts on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and it’s a mark of the successful organization that they are.

Jeremy Harness is a San Francisco Giants beat writer for http://www.sportsradioservice.com