The making of Tim Lincecum, the whirling dervish out of Washington

“It was the best game I’ve ever seen pitched,” former Washington Huskies head coach Ken Knutson said. Now the rehab pitching coach for the ACL Royals, Knutson is used to working with professional ballplayers, helping rebuild and rehab the best arms in the world and get them back on the diamond.

But on March 31, 2006, Knutson was watching from the Huskies’ dugout as a loose-limbed baseball phenom by the name of Tim Lincecum dominated on the hill against a UCLA roster that featured 12 future MLB draftees – four of whom would one day reach the big leagues.

That day, Lincecum struck out 18 batters, walked none and gave up just two hits. One was a drag bunt single, the other a liner to right field with two outs in the eighth.

“I asked [UCLA head coach] John Savage after the game, ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’” Knutson said. “That’s the greatest pitching I’ve ever seen. They had no chance. He was so dominant physically and his stuff was so good.”

These days, stories about Lincecum sound more like myth: Here was a pitcher listed at 5-foot-11 (but more likely a little shorter than that) with a blazing fastball and devastating changeup who appeared one day out of Bellevue, Wash., with the kind of backbreaking mechanics that seemingly defied the physical limitations of the human body. With long hair flowing behind him like a cape and a whiplike arm sculpted out of elastic and rubber, he would go on to win three World Series titles, collect two Cy Young Awards, and lead the National League in strikeouts on three occasions. Then, like Bigfoot – that other cryptid of Northwestern legend – he sunk back into the wild, only to be captured in glimpses and whispers.

All of that was to come, though. When Knutson first saw Lincecum pitch in high school, he told the San Francisco Gate, “He was sawed off. He looked like he was 9."

“I think he weighed about 80 pounds, and he was probably [5-foot-4], something like that,” Knutson said with a chuckle. “But he had a pretty good curveball for a kid his age.”

Lincecum’s mechanics – as odd as they were – were a family secret. His father, Chris, was an engineer for Boeing and had developed this routine to maximize torque and velocity, each muscle bending, snapping and releasing in perfect harmony to deliver dominance at the plate.

“He threw that way his whole life. His dad threw that way. He had an older brother that threw that way. I mean, literally, they all looked the same,” Knutson said.

The movement required tremendous strength, coordination, and above all flexibility. It’s a pitching motion that almost no one would recommend and yet, it worked.

“When I recruited him, his dad asked me, ‘Are you going to change him around?’” Knutson remembered. “I go, ‘No, not a bit. I like what he does. All I will try to do is manage his workloads a little bit and tell him what night he’s going to pitch.'”

The soft touch worked: Lincecum won Washington State Player of the year after striking out 183 batters in 91 2/3 innings in his senior year of high school, and then he reported to college and kept on improving. He won the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year and Pac-10 Pitcher of the year awards in his first season. Eating burgers before every start – a routine Lincecum would carry into the Majors – he continued to get better. In his final college season, Lincecum struck out 199 batters in 125 1/3 innings, posting a 1.94 ERA along the way.

“I think what created excellence in him was just his ability to compete against the hitter,” Knutson said. “He loved it. He just wanted to strike guys out. ‘I really don't care about anything other than punching this guy's ticket.’ I think he’d be the same if he was in the World Series, or if you went up against him in a scrimmage the day after Christmas. He loved that and he relished it.”

His performance, his stuff and his size all combined to intimidate batters and confound scouts. Knutson remembers a conversation he had with current USC head coach and former big leaguer Andy Stankiewicz, who was a professional scout at the time.

“I saw Lincecum last night and I wanted to put an eight on his heater,” Stankiewicz told Knutson, referring to giving the pitcher an 80 on the 20-80 scouting scale, the highest number that can be given out. “I wanted to put an eight on his breaking ball, but I was afraid to do it. I’m a first-year scout and this is the best stuff I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Despite his size and unusual mechanics, sometimes a fear for teams when it comes to scouting, the Giants selected Lincecum 10th overall in the 2006 Draft – three picks after Clayton Kershaw and just before Max Scherzer.

While many will remember Lincecum for what he did on the field, for performances like the one against UCLA or his two big league no-hitters, Knutson thinks of him differently. He remembers the “baseball rat,” the one who would start on Friday and then want to relieve on Sunday; the one who would – even after starts – throw from foul pole to foul pole, heaving the ball some 400-plus feet with ease.

“He was a baseball rat and loved to play and wanted to pitch all the time,” Knutson said.

Though injuries took their toll on Lincecum, ending his peak far too soon and sapping him of the dynamic flexibility that turned his lean body into a whirling dervish of pitching delight, the impact he made on the game is still felt today. Arrive at a Giants game and you’ll still see fans wearing No. 55 jerseys with Lincecum’s name on the back. Talk to Washington fans about the best game they’ve ever seen and they just may say it was a start that Lincecum had against UCLA back in 2006. Ask young pitchers coming up in the game – especially those who lack the 6-foot-something frames that make scouts sit up a little straighter in their seats – and they’ll likely point to the wiry kid with flowing hair spilling out of his cap as their inspiration.

More important than all of that, though, was what Lincecum meant to those who took the field alongside him.

“He was very popular with his teammates and that’s literally one of the best things you could ever say about a player,” Knutson said. “He was a good teammate. He was good for our program. He would do anything to help us win. Obviously he had a wonderful career afterward. It was a lot of fun to watch.”