Important Start For Lincoln

Today Brad Lincoln is scheduled to make his his third straight appearance as a starter against the Cleveland Indians instead of his normal role as reliever. Brad Lincoln is 3-2 on the year with a 3.15 ERA sounds pretty good right? Well not really, Lincoln's past two appearances have been starts and he has gone just 4 and 4.1 innings giving up five then four runs in those starts.

Basically the reason Lincoln's ERA is as low as it is, is because of the remarkable work he has done as a reliever. If I have done my math correctly I believe that Lincoln stands somewhere around a 0.41 ERA out of the bullpen with a 3-0 record, but don't quote me on that. This is one of the best reliever ERA's in the National League, so this might leave you wondering why is there such a big difference between Lincoln as a starter and a reliever? 

The reason is that Lincoln basically only throw's two pitches and this catch's up to him as a starter. Last start against Baltimore Lincoln threw his fastball 60.9% of his pitches and his curve-ball 39.9% of his pitches. If you do the math Lincoln throws these two pitches just about 91% of the time, which is way to much when a hitter gets to face you multiple times in a game. Major League hitters are the best hitters in the world, and part of what makes them so great is the ability to be able to adjust to the pitcher. Lincoln has a very good curve-ball don't get me wrong but if a Major League hitter see's it enough they will be able to hit it, and hit it well.

That is what make's Lincoln so successful as a reliever is that most of the time the hitters will only get to see his curve-ball one or two times a game making it a lot harder to adjust to. Also when Lincoln comes out of the pen he throws his fastball about one MPH faster. I talked about this in a previous article but believe it or not one extra MPH on a fastball makes a big difference, trust me. I am not quite sure why Lincoln does not throw his change-up more often, last year Lincoln would throw his change-up as much as 15% of the time while this year he hardly throws it 5% of the time. Clint Hurdle went as far as to call his change-up "a good major league pitch" recently which just makes me wonder even more why he is so hesitant to throw his change.

If Lincoln does not perform well today against the Indians I cant say it will be his last appearance as a starter because that is what I said last time, but I can say that I hope it would be his last appearance as a starter this year at least. I talked about it a little bit earlier this week but the Pirates have two maybe even three guys at the AAA level that could easily come in and start a few games if they needed them to, so I am not quite sure why they are so determined for Lincoln to be successful. I am not sure what the Pirates future plans are for Lincoln but I would think that they would be as a reliever especially with all the pitching depth they have in the minor leagues but the longer they keep Lincoln as a starter the more I wonder what they actually have in mind for Lincoln.