Sports Radio Interviews

Tim Lincecum: I’m Not Surprised Where We Are

Tim Lincecum reminds me of one of the many reasons I love sports.  I derive a strange pleasure knowing that he looks like a pre-teenager; actually, he looks a little like my 8-year-old nephew (who is a star in his own right).  One would hear Lincecum’s stats and credentials, how hard he throws, etcetera, and then they would see his face and be taken aback.  I love the shock value.  He doesn’t look a typical ball player in any shape or form and many more people who don’t follow the game closely will discover Tim tonight.  Lincecum takes the hill for the National League in the All-Star Game in St. Louis – a huge honor for the 25-year-old.  Lincecum joined ESPN Chicago to discuss why the Giants have turned it around this season, if any of his teammates gave Juan Uribe grief for his error in Jonathan Sanchez’ no hitter, and tonight’s assignment.

How do you feel after being named the starter for the National League in the All-Star game?

“Like I said, it’s a definite honor for me.  I said also before that just being in the game is big enough for me but let alone being a starter, especially with the people with the credentials, the other all-stars, and pitchers with the credentials they had, it just sort of fell into my lap.  I was kind of lucky I guess.”

Would you put your staff with the Giants up against any staff in MLB right now?

“Yeah definitely.  Outside of our 5-man rotation, our bullpen has been doing a stellar job just keeping runners from coming in, doing what they need to do.  I think our whole team has been doing what we need to do, in close games we’ve been playing well.  Obviously, there’s games that slip away from teams from time to time, but for us, considering what we’ve been doing the last couple of years, we’ve made definite leaps and bounds in the way we play ball – a lot of our guys take pride in that.  We’re not the big home run hitting team that some of the teams from the past have been and some of the teams in the league are now, but we manufacture runs, we get our bunts down, we do hit and runs we play ball the right way.”

How surprised are you that your team is where it’s at right now?

“I wouldn’t say that I’m that surprised.  Everybody kind of knew that it was one of those things that would come around in due time.  Like I said, we’ve been struggling the past couple of years with scoring runs and just our overall record, but coming into this year we said we’re going to put this behind us, and like I said we’ve made that jump and kind of moved on.”

Has anyone given Juan Uribe gruff for making the error in the no hitter?

“I don’t think I gave him any hard time about that; if anything, the people who did give him a hard time about that did it was all in good joking.  I think that, yeah, that would have been great to get the perfect game, but to settle for a no hitter is pretty good too.  And the thing is, sometimes you can’t control what’s going to happen, some balls are going to bounce different, some balls are going to drop in the outfield, some balls are going to get through the infield and you’ve just got to take them as they came and Sanchy did his job that game at just staying poised and keeping his focus all game.  So, outside of things that happen as such with the error, I don’t think he was that bad.  Juan was disappointed in himself, but we all got to share in the excitement together of the no-hitter.”

Listen to Tim Lincecum on ESPN Chicago with Waddle & Silvy

Tags: Baseball, Jonathan Sanchez, Juan Uribe, MLB, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum