Maybe Tim Lincecum is duct tape

As you read this, whether you do so soon after this is sent out to the Say Hey, Baseball mailing list and posted to SB Nation’s MLB page or well into spring training, there will likely be upwards of 100 free agents at the training camp in Bradenton, Fla. put on by the MLB Players Association. Some signed players may attend in solidarity. Scott Boras clients won’t attend, as they have their own facility provided by the agent. The camp remains a manifestation of the offseason’s screwy economics, and the number of seemingly deserving players are out of a fair-paying job because of it.

Teams will always have weaknesses, no matter how many free agents are signed. But players expected to fly off the shelf, the typical big-ticket items like top-rotation starting pitchers similar to Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish, didn’t. And now there are teams who have weaknesses to patch up with the duct tape for the job sitting in a training camp in the middle of Florida. That these conditions exist, suggests teams want to pay less for free agents that they have more than they want to improve. Teams, at a detriment to labor ethics, can and will (and have) find ways to have both.

It seems now that the aim of front offices is to underpay for production as much as possible. Tim Lincecum in his present situation may be a low-risk, high-reward player that allows a front office to get much higher value than what they might end up paying. While the dam in Bradenton may not crack, Lincecum can maybe, just maybe, act as a team’s duct tape.

Lincecum was last seen on a baseball field getting shelled for a 9.16 ERA in 38.1 innings with the Angels in 2016. Before that, Tim was what the experts call a joy. Sometimes in baseball, you can’t track where that joy is coming from. You can only know the feeling in your chest is there. But Tim was one of the parts of a baseball field to which undeniable joy could be tracked. He was 5’11 but would whip baseballs in at 98 MPH. That was who The Freak was.

That was before his velocity took off on him, packing one of those sticks with a bandana around it, its absence felt in the first season of its departure in 2012. It was the first season since his debut that his ERA was above four and his innings fell below 200, and they never turned back.

But this offseason, he emerged from the ashes as a really jacked phoenix. I’m sure you remember the tweet. He might not be The Freak again, but maybe The Freak Who Settled Down in The Suburbs With a Wife and Kids. According to the reports out of his Feb. 15 showcase, he seems on track to do so. While he didn’t find his peak velocity, he wasn’t in the 88 MPH range like he was in 2015. In fact, he was tracked at 90-93 MPH.

San Francisco, where he found the zenith of his career, was one of the teams who were reportedly impressed with Lincecum’s performance. And they could be one of the teams suited best to try him on for size. They have poor rotation depth, and if the front office won’t break the line to sign a free agent, maybe it’s fate for Tim’s comeback story to have its maximum magic potential in the place he found the most success. He won’t be the strongest duct tape out there. Maybe, in the end, he won’t be duct tape at all. But if you’re telling me there’s a chance, it’s worth pulling for.