Giants, Lincecum get drubbed by Paul Goldschmidt again

This is a blog of contradictions. It's filled with the lowbrow thoughts of a person who desperately wants to be considered highbrow. I want to be accepted and admired, I want to be objective and passionate, rational and irrational, smart and stupid, yet I want to make sure the priority is on the stupid jokes. Sometimes, it's a jumbled mess. Let's take tonight, for example.

I want to appreciate talent. Baseball is the best, just the best, and I want to celebrate the fantastic athletes that play the game. What Paul Goldschmidt has accomplished/is accomplishing/will accomplish is amazing. He's an eighth-round pick -- taken nine picks after the Giants took Gus Benusa, who got 155 at-bats in the Arizona League before the Giants released him. Goldschmidt is a joy to watch, a preternatural slugger and athlete. I want to appreciate him in the spirt of baseball.

On the other hand, when he faces Tim Lincecum, I find myself saying, "Hey, Tim Lincecum, why don't you hit him in the dick with a fastball?"

Then I catch myself, because that's horrible. This isn't important. This is sports. This is an arbitrary selection of allegiances set in a world designed to take your money. None of this matters. This is all for our entertainment, just as long as we watch another commercial. Buy another panda hat. Subscribe to more MLB.tv. Enjoy the theater, spend your money, and let the players play upon their stage.

Then Paul Goldschmidt comes up, and I think, hey, now there's a guy who should get hit in the dick with a fastball. Because that seems fair. And it's crazy enough to work.

But wait, wait, wait. That's nonsense. Even if that weren't a completely heinous thing to think, which it is, it's wholly inappropriate to type and publish. Parents have told me, "Say, my kid's in the eighth grade, and he can't get enough of your blog," and that puts a kind of pressure on me to avoid the filthy stuff, to be calm and measured at every opportunity. And most of the time, I'm very, very, very good about it.

That's when Paul Goldschmidt comes up to bat against TIm Lincecum, and even though there's no way he's going to do it again, he … does … it … again. Every time. Every damned time. I've never seen anything like it.

He should probably get …

Nah.

But, seriously, what is that guy's problem? I feel like I'm a good person, and he's just hurtful.

As you may know, I have a spreadsheet going that details what Paul Goldschmidt's numbers look like without the contributions of Tim Lincecum. When I entered them in tonight, my computer froze. Then the screen went dark.

When it rebooted, this is all that was on the screen:

How does Excel even know who Guy Fieri is? Dunno, but you can't argue with math. That's what a Lincecum/Goldschmidt matchup looks like. Watch it for several hours until you understand.

Okay, you ghouls, Goldschmidt's career line is .292/.381/.521. It's .288/.378/.504 without Tim Lincecum. That's ludicrous.

We're all clear that Tim Lincecum is done, right?

I don't wholly believe that. Not yet. It's just a kinda believe right now. What did you see tonight, though? A guy who couldn't control much, a fastball that barely cracked 90 m.p.h., and dingers, dingers, dingers.

So find a path for renewed success. Map out how Lincecum is going to be good again. Let's put our heads together and figure this out. Imagine a scenario in which everyone's like, oh, heck yeah, this Lincecum kid is good at helping baseball teams win baseball games again.

Scenario one is that he's a good starting pitcher. In this scenario, the Giants keep sending him out there, over and over and over and over again, and hoping he figures things out. He ends up figuring things out, makes better pitches, and becomes a good pitcher again.

Scenario two is that he goes to the bullpen, where his deception and offspeed pitches play up. Where his velocity increases a tick. Where you can pick and choose where he's deployed. As in, not Paul Goldschmidt, because good lord.

You know which path is more likely. But we're going to watch scenario one for a while and hope, hope, hope it's the right one. We're embarking on year three of this. It's not over. There's no reason, though, to think the old Tim Lincecum is walking through that door. There's no reason to think he's going to be Bronson Arroyo from two hours ago. Just stick him in the Santiago Casilla role and see if he can't be Santiago Casilla for a while, where people cared about his successes and failures, but they didn't define how the entire game went.

Let's just wait and see, though. Let's just wait and see.

(Not pretty. It's not going to be pretty. That's my easily influenced opinion. Hope I'm wrong!)