The Atlanta Braves are baseball's gold-standard franchise when it comes to starting pitching. But only one man on the mound was worth his weight Thursday night.
All 170-something pounds of it.
Tim Lincecum turned around the Braves and sat them down, proving his might and value extends far beyond a mere collector of Cy Young Award trophies. The Giants benefited from an apparent blown call before pushing across a run on Cody Ross' two-out single in the fourth inning, and Lincecum made that slim advantage as secure as Fort Knox while going the distance for a 1-0 victory in Game 1 of their NL Division Series Thursday night.
While a surging crowd roared its approval, Lincecum pitched as if he was playing a 119-note jazz set. He improvised with his lethal changeup and slider -- a pitch he began throwing with regularity just a few weeks ago -- and pumped fastballs past the Braves' slow bats in the latter innings.
The limber little ace wasn't subtle on his final pitch. He pumped a 92 mph fastball straight down the middle as Derrek Lee, his head deeply pondering the breaking stuff he had seen all night, let it pass for Lincecum's 14th strikeout.
Lincecum only gave a subtle fist pump -- a puddle of still water with a stadium reverberating around him. Afterward, he talked of his workday as if he had just spent eight hours as a mall cop.
"It's hard to judge what better would be," he said. "If you come out on top, I think that's good." His teammates were more effusive. "It's one of the best pitching performances I've ever been a part of," said Ross, whose RBI single scooted under third baseman Omar Infante's glove. "It's so, so, so much better to be on this side. I know I never felt comfortable facing him. He's capable of doing what he did tonight day-in and day-out." Reliever Sergio Romo was amazed that coaches asked him to unbutton his jacket in the eighth inning. "They said go warm up, and I'm thinking, 'Why?' " Romo said. "Hey, I was a fan today. I was entertained from the first pitch to the last pitch. I've never seen that before, especially in the magnitude of a game like this. "Holy cow. He had his A-plus game today." Lincecum obliterated the Giants' postseason record of 10 strikeouts, last accomplished by Jack Sanford in Game 5 of the 1962 World Series at Yankee Stadium. Hal Schumacher (1936), Carl Hubbell ('33) and Jesse Barnes ('21) were the others. Lincecum also finished two behind the division series record of 16 strikeouts, set by Kevin Brown for the San Diego Padres in 1998. As playoff debuts go, it didn't quite match the no-hitter that Philadelphia's Roy Halladay threw Wednesday. But it was close enough. And while this is putting the parade float before the horse, if the Phillies and Giants coast through, it is possible that you could see a Lincecum-Halladay collision in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series. Halladay has the look and build of a pitcher meant to stare daggers into hitters deep into October. But there were some who questioned whether Lincecum was ready to put a season's labor on his slender shoulders. He rebounded exceptionally well from a woeful and winless August in which he lost all five of his starts. "We never lost confidence in this kid," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "He was searching there for a little while, but he found it. He went out there and pitched as fine a ballgame as you can pitch. In the second inning, Lincecum did the unimaginable. He threw 14 pitches, nine for strikes -- every last one of them a swing and a miss. "I don't know how many he struck out, but it was more than fingers on my hands," Braves manager Bobby Cox said. "His breaking stuff is always out of the strike zone. Easier said than done: 'Don't swing at it.' It's almost impossible." Lincecum and catcher Buster Posey switched to fastballs in the later innings, sensing the Braves were either late or tentative to swing. "Their swings were telling me what I needed to throw," Lincecum said. "The game will show you. "... And I've got Buster back there helping me, so that makes it twice as easy." The Braves' questionable gloves, a questionable umpiring call and a very questionable move by Cox allowed the Giants to break through in the fourth. Posey hit a leadoff single and stole the first base of his major league career when Bochy put him in motion with two strikes on Pat Burrell. Braves right-hander Derek Lowe struck out Burrell, and replays appeared to show that second baseman Brooks Conrad applied his high tag before Posey reached the base, but umpire Paul Emmel called Posey safe. Was he? Posey, Boy Scout that he is, answered honestly. And if he chopped down a cherry tree, he would admit to that, too. "I guess it's a good thing we don't have instant replay right now," he said, smiling. The call made a huge impact, but so did Cox's strategy. After Juan Uribe struck out, Cox opted for Lowe to walk Pablo Sandoval intentionally -- even though the impatient hitter swung at two pitches out of the zone while striking out in his first at-bat. Ross followed with a ground ball to the left side that was better placed than struck. It scooted under Infante's glove -- a play many third basemen would have fielded -- and took so long to reach Matt Diaz in left field that Posey scored without a play. "We made the right move," Cox said in a terse interview session. "We made an error. He made the pitch and got a ground ball. We kicked it." And Lincecum kicked it into overdrive. "You get that one run, and you know how valuable that is in the postseason," he said. "So you try to turn it into shutdown mode."
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