Last season Tim’s ERA+ was a league-leading 167. That’s DARN good. But it’s also tied for only 184th best in history and pales in comparison to Tim Keefe’s 294 in 1880 and in a better comparision, Pedro Martinez’s 291 in 2000.

Hence my point that as excellent as Tim has been, he has to do better for much longer to become the best ever. For instance, all Walter Johnson could do (for a lousy team, a concept Tim knows well but will almost certainly change next decade) was 417 wins and a 147 ERA+. Martinez’s arm problems took the wind out of his sails, but he still has a great 214-99 won-loss record and a 154 ERA+ despite some mediocre and even crummy years sinced he hurt his arm.

Cy Young won a record 512 games and had a 138 career ERA+. Tim has won 28 games and has an ERA+ of 139. Christy Mathewson went 373-188 with a 135 ERA+.

Tim needs to put up some fabulous years in order to become the best ever. He will eventually hit his decline years, so he needs to build a cushion — AND get lots of wins, since this team statistic is considered to be overly important. So far, so good in that regard, as Tim’s 28-11 record gives him a .718 winning percentage. And in two or three seasons, the Giants will actually have some hitters.

Still, run support hasn’t been a problem for Tim. Whether by luck or some intangible reason, the Giants have scored runs when Tim pitches.

So what does Tim have to do to become the greatest ever?

The first thing is to continue to improve his control. Tim’s walk rate in his rookie season of 4.00 has fallen dramatically to 2.64 so far this season. But his 59.1% first-pitch strike rate of 2007 has fallen to just 51.4% in 2009.

Secondly, he needs to stay healthy. Given that his dad was clocked at 88 mph at age 52, Tim appears to have the genes. The two are built nearly alike and are said to have very similar motions. Tim could potentially have a long, long career. Every pitcher knows that his next pitch could be his last, but Tim’s mechanics are designed to take the pressure off his arm. As far as I know, he still doesn’t need to ice.

Third, it would help if the Giants either got better hitting or continue to hit for TIM. It takes 20 years of 15-win seasons to reach the magic 300 wins. Tim is only 272 short thus far.

Fourth, he needs to get over his propensity for yielding hits in bunches. Over his career, he’s been pretty good at avoiding large innings, but one would think his dominant stuff would allow even more consistency.

Fifth, he needs to avoid throwing wild pitches and having runners run wild against him. Tim is doing better at both, particularly holding runners. But far too many of the runs Tim has given up have resulted from instances such as an infield or bloop hit, a steal of second, a wild pitch to third and a run being driven in with a ground ball with the infield back.

Tim has been a great pitcher thus far. Forging a 28-11 won-loss record with a bad club takes a bit of doing. I have felt since before Tim threw his very first major league pitch that he would become the top pitcher in SF Giants history, which with Marichal and Perry to chase, will still take a ton of doing. I never went so far as to say he would outdo Christy Mathewson. The bar at the top is very, very high and has been set by guys who pitched sensationally over a huge number of innings, more innings than it is reasonable to expect from today’s pitchers.

Tim does have two things going for him in that regard.

First, he came very close to equalling Mathewson’s 267 strikeouts in one season. Tim’s spectacular late-season push not only left him 59 strikeouts ahead of Johan Santana for the 2008 NL best, if left him only two whiffs shy of Mathewson’s career high season. Since his start on June 16th of last season, Tim has averaged 10.71 strikeouts per nine innings. So far this season he has done even slightly better at 10.77 K/9.

Tim will need to use his great ability to make batters swing and miss to differentiate himself from the old-timers who didn’t strike out nearly as many but won game after game by throwing inning after inning. It’s tough to put up numbers in a five-man rotation that can compare with pitchers who pitched in three-man starting staffs.

Second, Tim needs to take advantage of his genes and training methods to forge a long, long career. It’s not entirely impossible Tim could have a long career as a starter, add in a second career as a closer — and then refine his knuckle ball and become Hoyt Wilhelm.

Could you imagine Tim throwing 88 mph at age 52 as his dad did — and mixing in the knuckle ball with his three other very good secondary pitches?

One other possible differentiating factor I just thought of. Tim has become VERY hard to homer against (although Marcus Thames actually did so twice in one game last season — in fact, the game on June 16th). Most power pitchers are prone to the long ball. Tim has really cut down on not only the home run, but the extra base hit in general.

One would think the way to get to Tim would be to look for his fastball on the first pitch and take a serious hack at the first fastball the batter sees. But amazingly Tim yielded only three — THREE — extra base hits last season on first pitches.

I personally think that as great as Tim has been thus far, he still has much better within himself. If he is able to tap the well within, it is possible he could eventually be named with the all-time great hurlers.

But for now, let’s just be happy that he, more than any other pitcher, might be the pitcher most teams would choose to build their staff around. But before we get TOO giddy, we shouldn’t forget that as well as Tim has pitched this season (particularly after his first two starts), he insn’t near the top 10 in NL ERA.

When the season is over, he quite possibly will be atop it or nearly so once again. But there are still two things that Tim needs that are beyond his immediate control. He needs run support and better fielding support than he has received in his last 10 or 12 starts.

With better fielding support, Tim could bring his BABIP back to a more normal figure, which would mean his hits per nine innings would become very low indeed. That coupled with his low home run rate and improving walk rate would seem to translate into even fewer runs allowed.

That in turn means more innings pitched and more wins.

Some guys are power performers. Others are pitchers. Tim has long been a power performer, and he appears to be becoming more and more of a PITCHER with almost every outing. Tim KNOWS how to pitch. And as he gains experience against major league hitters, he should be able to put those art of pitching skills to better and better use.

Tim Lincecum could conceivably become the top pitcher of his era. It is conceivablee that he could even become the best of any era. But he has miles to go before he sleeps.

I feel that with Lincecum on the mound, I can tolerate putting a bad defender in the lineup for his bat. I want to make sure that I score enough runs to win the games Lincecum starts, and if a poor defender allows an extra baserunner, Lincecum will be able to pitch his way out of that situation more often than my other starters would.

I’m not convinced that this line of thinking is “correct”, mind you.

2007: 2.96 ERA after June 19
2008: 2.62 ERA
2009: 3.25 ERA thus far

That’s roughly 3.00 ERA. That would rank him:

2006: he would have been 2nd
2007: he would have been 2nd, or tied for 2nd
2008: he would have been 4th
2009: he is currently around 11th (too early)

So basically he has been a 3.00 ERA, and that would roughly rank him among the Top 5 the past three seasons. If you excuse his early struggles this season, he has a 2.25 ERA since those games, and put him roughly as a mid-2 ERA, which would pretty much put him either 1-2 the past three seasons.

When a pitcher can do that, while leading the league in strikeouts and K/9, for over two seasons, I think that people could start to make the move to say “ever”. I wouldn’t either, as you I’m more conservative, but I can see why others might say that. Yeah, plenty of stuff that can go wrong, but he’s done extremely well in a short period of time.

For example, Baseball Forecaster has this stat, Pure Quality Starts or PQS, that they keep track of. Lincecum has had what they define as DOM starts (Dominating):
Lincecum: 75% in H2-07, 74% in H1-08, 86% in H2-08.

Johan Santana: 60% in H2-07, 79% in H1-08, 80% in H2-08
Dan Haren: 80% in H2-07, 89% in H1-08, 71% in H2-08
Roy Halliday: 47% in H2-07, 68% in H1-08, 86% in H2-08
Roy Oswalt: 50% in H2-07, 58% in H1-08, 69% in H2-08
C.C. Sabathia: 73% in H2-07, 70% in H1-08, 80% in H2-08
Brandon Webb: 80% in H2-07, 75% in H1-08, 57% in H2-08
Brett Myers: 73% in H2-07, 29% in H1-08, 77% in H2-08
Cole Hamels: 70% in H2-07, 69% in H1-08, 70% in H2-08
Felix Hernandez: 50% in H2-07, 59% in H1-08, 57% in H2-08
A.J. Burnett: 70% in H2-07, 50% in H1-08, 71% in H2-08
Josh Beckett: 86% in H2-07, 65% in H1-08, 80% in H2-08

As one can see, Lincecum has been among the best, if not the best, over the past 1.5 seasons; only Haren has been just as good, if not better. And his career has just barely begun, whereas Haren had a number of years under his belt before becoming this good.