While doing my daily blog stroll, I found an excellent piece by Dan Braunstein over at ESPN’s Dodgers Report (Tony Jackson’s blog site) entitled Dodgers Finding Ways that had some very interesting facts about the recently concluded Dodgers vs. Giants series at the Ravine this past week. The most notable (and unpleasant) fact is that in spite of Matt Kemp’s torrid start to the 2012 season, Tim Lincecum absolutely owns him. In 42 career plate appearances against Lincecum, Kemp has struck out 17 times, or once every 2.47 plate appearances. No other pitcher has struck out Kemp more than 10 times including the two pitchers who he has faced more times than Lincecum, those being Barry Zito and Ubaldo Jimenez. In those 42 plate appearances against Lincecum, Kemp has exactly one extra base hit, a double that he hit last season. There are several other great statistics in  Braunstein’s article and it is definitely worth the time to read, but I want to dig into this Lincecum thing a little deeper.

Tim Lincecum keeps the ball hidden better than any pitcher I have ever seen. (Photo by Harry How - Getty Images)

I will be the first to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with Tim Lincecum; I hate him because… well… he is a Giant and any Dodger fan worth their salt hates the Giants. I love him (ok, maybe that’s a bit much)… what I like about Tim Lincecum is that he is good – VERY good. To win a Cy Young award is a great accomplishment and the dream of every Major League pitcher but to win two of them is just plain crazy and something that very few pitchers have done in the 135 year history of the game. I also have to admit that the only time that I ever see Tim Lincecum pitch is in person at Dodger Stadium when the hated ones are in town or on TV when the Dodgers travel to Phone Company Du jour Park, and even then I spend more time willing him to get lit up by the Dodgers than actually watching him pitch; but Wednesday’s game was different – I actually spent a great deal of time watching Lincecum very closely through my infamous binoculars, and you know what? Tim Lincecum is not a just a very good pitcher – he is a great pitcher. The single most important thing that I noticed about Tim Lincecum is that he hides the ball better than any other pitcher I have ever seen. As he is getting the sign from the catcher and is about to start his wind-up the ball is, of course, buried in his glove; when he goes into his wind-up he pivots to his right and has his back to the hitter; and when he is into his delivery he takes an exceptionally long stride but still has his upper torso away from the hitter and the ball is still concealed. It isn’t until the very last second that he turns his upper torso towards the hitter and it is then that the hitter actually sees the ball for the first time, thus making it extremely difficult for hitters to pick it up and even more difficult for them to detect any rotation on the ball. Simply put, Lincecum’s delivery makes pitch identification (spin) nearly impossible. It is my opinion that this is the reason why Matt Kemp (and MANY others) have a very difficult time against the two-time Cy Young award winner.

If you think that Tim Lincecum is a victim of his pitch counts, think again. In Wednesday night’s game, Lincecum had thrown only 52 pitches heading into the 4th inning, so it wasn’t as though he was out of gas; but when the final out of that fateful inning was recorded, he had thrown 36 pitches in the inning. Somehow the Dodgers found something that allowed eight batters to come to the plate and four of them to score before the dust had settled. Who didn’t come to the plate in that monumental 4th inning? That would be Matt Kemp, who led off the bottom of the 5th inning by (you guessed it) striking out against Lincecum.

With all of this said and when you consider what Matt Kemp has done against nearly every other pitcher in the league, I can live with Tim Lincecum owning Matt Kemp; but I’m pretty sure that Matt Kemp can’t and I’d bet the farm that he will be doing everything in his power to try to reverse this ownership thing.

GO DODGERS!