Cover boy hit for a loss

Mets hurt Lincecum with long ball

Henry Schulman - San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate)

Tim Lincecum has to hope his next New York experience is better than his first two.

Last year at Shea Stadium, he started the game that ended with Armando Benitez's two-balk meltdown in the 12th inning. On Tuesday night, Lincecum took his second loss of the season in a 7-0 wipeout that was settled in the first inning when he threw a hit-me hanger to Carlos Beltran. The Mets' center fielder sent it over the right-field wall for a three-run homer.

Lincecum returns to the Big Apple for next week's All-Star Game. Regardless of how he fares in his final first-half start at Chicago on Sunday, he will not arrive at Yankee Stadium on a hot streak. To the contrary, the kid has allowed four or more earned runs three times this season, all within his last five starts.

After surrendering one homer in 207 at-bats this season to a left-handed hitter, he allowed two Tuesday, Beltran's in the first inning and a 435-foot blast by Carlos Delgado in the sixth, more than enough to doom Lincecum (10-2) to his first loss since April 29.

His velocity was down, too, from his normal 95 mph to 92. That matched the Mets' Mike Pelfrey, who stifled the Giants on three singles through seven innings.

All of which raises the question of whether the accumulation of innings (1212/3) in Lincecum's first full major-league season is having an effect. The Giants do not think so. They shuffled the rotation to get him two starts this week instead of one.

"He has set the bar so high, when he gives up four in six innings, you try to look if there's something he's doing differently," manager Bruce Bochy said. "There's nothing physical. Timmy's fine."

Lincecum said so, too.

"My arm feels the same as it usually does," he said. "It's a day-to-day thing. Every day you see what you have. Sometimes it's 95, 96. Today I didn't feel like I had much juice. I didn't have a rhythm."

The Giants had a shot to strike in the first inning when they loaded the bases on an error, a hit batsman and Aaron Rowand's infield single. John Bowker then struck out looking, on a fastball he considered inside, to end his team's one and only threat.

Then, after Jose Reyes lined out to start Lincecum's night, Endy Chavez singled, David Wright walked and Beltran crushed a curveball that sort of rolled over the middle of the plate. After allowing two first-inning runs all season, Lincecum coughed up three on one pitch.

Although Bochy credited Lincecum for pitching shutout ball from then until the sixth, Lincecum said he was fortunate his line was not worse, noting all the bullet outs he got, the two double plays his defense turned and Bengie Molina's great throw to nail Reyes trying to steal second.

Asked about Lincecum, who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated last week, Randy Winn said, "I don't think it was a terrible outing for him. He didn't seem to have some of his offspeed pitches, which is unlike him, but I thought he did a good job pitching."

The Giants did a terrible job hitting against Pelfrey, who has suffocated a few teams in similar fashion this year. The Giants had one base hit out of the infield against the right-hander. Starting with Bowker's strikeout, Pelfrey and two relievers retired 25 of the last 27 hitters.

"He really hit his spots," Bowker said of Pelfrey. "Against right-handers, he buried his sinker on their hands."

Lincecum needed to be shutout-worthy to have any shot at his 11th win, but on this night, he was anything but.

He is on pace to throw about 220 innings this season. Bochy and his staff have stopped babying the 24-year-old. So what will they watch for as the year progresses?

"Like any pitcher, we'll watch mechanical stuff, if he's laboring," Bochy said. "We're a little over the halfway point. He says he feels fine. You're not going to go out there with your best stuff every start."