The Giants must move Tim Lincecum to the bullpen - Beyond the Box Score

Is it time for the Freak to move to the pen?

Former Mets farmhand Petit unsung hero for Giants | New York Post

Yusmeiro Petit had a very good year and is having a tremendous off-season. Will it be good enough to get him a starting spot next year?

Jim Duquette remembers the debates in the Mets’ front office. Yusmeiro Petit was dominating minor league hitters, but doing it with stuff that did not overwhelm.
“We couldn’t get a consensus,” Duquette said recalling his days as the Mets’ assistant general manager. “He is getting everyone out, but doing it with an 88-90 mph fastball. We called it an invisi-ball. Is he a No. 1, a No. 2 or just another guy?”
Finally, Omar Minaya, then the Mets’ GM, said the club came to peace that Petit was a back-end starter because his “velocity was short.”

FG: A Good Reason To Watch Yusmeiro Petit Pitch

All he needs is two Petit fours!

[Yusmeiro] Petit has appeared in 33 games for the Giants in 2014, which is one more major league game than he’d seen in the past five seasons combined.

Petit was once a top-100 prospect, and he has been around for so long that he was part of the 2005 trade that sent Carlos Delgado from the Marlins to the Mets, but he’s also been DFA’d at least twice, including by the Giants last year, and lost on waivers from Arizona to Seattle another time. For a three year stretch between 2010-12, he threw exactly 4.2 big league innings, and he spent all of 2011 in the Mexican Leagues before the Giants took a flyer on him as a non-roster guy in January of 2012…

if you happen to find yourself with nothing to do at 3:45 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, you should take the time to check out Petit’s start against the Rockies anyway, for one simple reason: Petit, an otherwise nondescript pitcher of little repute, might just break a major league record for pitching dominance. 38 times in a row, hitters have stepped to the plate, and 38 times, they’ve failed to reach base. The record of 45… [was] set by the White Sox’s Mark Buehrle when he followed up a perfect game with 5 1/3 spotless innings in his next start.

Obviously, Petit isn’t a great major league pitcher, or, usually, even a good major league pitcher. But he’s had his moments — last year, he came within a strike of a perfect game — and for the last month he’s been the right combination of good (13 K, 0 BB) and lucky (every batted ball going to a fielder). On Thursday against a bad Colorado team, he’ll just need to keep it going through the third inning to set a new record. It won’t be as impressive as Buehrle’s perfect game, of course, since it wasn’t done all at once, and it might not even be remembered beyond this week if he does it. It’s still worth keeping track of. After all, it’s not every day you see a pitcher threaten to retire more hitters in a row than anyone, ever.

Bochy not ready to announce Lincecum decision

Opening Day thru June 20: 15 GS, 82.7 IP, 4.90 ERA
June 25 (no-hitter) thru July 22: 5 GS, 38 IP, 0.95 ERA
July 25 thru August 23: 6 GS, 24.7 IP, 9.49 ERA

I have no idea what to make of this. (Or, for that matter, of Lincecum’s pic on his B-R page.)

Who will start [for the Giants] Thursday? “TBA.” [Manager Bruce] Bochy has talked to Dave Righetti and Brian Sabean, but he won’t announce anything until after he gets a chance to talk to Tim Lincecum…

[Yusmeiro] Petit is off-limits anyway after throwing 4 1/3 yesterday, and he probably won’t be used tomorrow, either. That means we’ll almost certainly have to wait to see if Petit extends an amazing streak. He has retired 38 consecutive batters, seven short of Mark Buehrle’s MLB record…

If Petit is moved to the rotation, Bochy would slide Juan Gutierrez or Lincecum into the long relief role…

“Timmy really takes it so hard,” Bochy said. “He feels like he let everybody down … he’s taking it extremely hard.”