{"id":7321,"date":"2013-08-15T13:29:11","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T17:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7321"},"modified":"2013-08-15T13:29:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T17:29:11","slug":"lincecums-pending-free-agency-whats-he-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7321","title":{"rendered":"Lincecum’s pending Free Agency; what’s he worth?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"What<\/a>

What would you pay Lincecum in 2014? Photo via SD Dirk flickr via wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

An interesting question was posed in an ESPN chat a while ago that I made a note on to come back to.<\/p>\n

Should the Giants offer\u00a0Tim Lincecum<\/strong> a qualifying offer, or just cut him loose without any compensation ties this coming off season? \u00a0And a better question: if you were a GM looking for pitching this coming off-season, what would you offer him?<\/p>\n

First some stats. \u00a0Lincecum is in the last year of a 2yr\/$40.5M deal<\/a> signed to avoid his last two years of arbitration. \u00a0This is on the heels of a 2yr\/$23M deal that took out his first two years of arbitration. \u00a0He’s already north of $60M in career earnings before hitting his first pure free agent contract. \u00a0But he’s at a cross-roads.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the progression of his career stat-wise<\/a>: 2 straight Cy Youngs before even hitting his first year of arbitration (which, if you remember, was a Super-2 year because the Giants apparently cannot read a calendar; this little snafu cost them probably $20M in salary). \u00a0He went from an ERA+ of 171 in 2010 to last year’s bottoming out season, where he posted a 68 ERA+, a 5.18 ERA and was pulled from the rotation in favor of\u00a0Barry Zito<\/strong> (an insult to end all insults) in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Garrett Hooe<\/strong> at FederalBaseball just posted a great analysis as well<\/a>, including insight into Lincecum’s breakdown of mechanics, his velocity loss and other things. \u00a0His analysis is great; no need to replicate it here.<\/p>\n

In 2013 he’s regained some of his performance but not enough; he’s still pitching like a 5th\/6th starter. \u00a0His month-by-month splits<\/a> give no help: he was decent to good in April, awful in May, decent to good in June, mediocre in July and so far has been lights out in August. \u00a0The offensively-challenged Nats just tagged him for 6 runs in 6 innings<\/a>\u00a0en route to his 12th loss of the season.<\/p>\n

Overall, his velocity is down, he has weird mechanics, and he’s clearly deviating from those weird mechanics as of late. \u00a0What GM out there is willing to give him a shot, given those two parameters? \u00a0Probably more than a few frankly, given his pedigree, but at what cost?<\/p>\n

The answer to the second question (what is his value on the FA market) drives the answer to the first question (whether to offer him a QO). \u00a0 I went looking for some comparisons from last year’s FA market to try to estimate what his market may be this coming off season and found the following data points of interest:<\/p>\n