McKeon Questions Lincecum's All-Star Selection

As expected, Tim Lincecum made the All Star team this year.

He did so by virtue of being a managerial selection, along with Giants pitchers Matt Cain, Ryan Vogelsong and Brian Wilson.

That's Bochy's prerogative, and it's hard to argue about Lincecum's name value. Unless you're 80-year-old Marlins manager (and Bochy's old boss in San Diego!) Jack McKeon, who apparently wasn't too thrilled with Bochy's picks for pitchers.

"Do we reward for what you're doing now or do we reward for what you've done in the past?" McKeon asked reporters on Saturday, per the Mercury News.

(Quick aside: as Drew Margary points out at NBC Philadelphia's "Philthy Stuff," McKeon's been doing a lot of complaining recently.)

If we're rewarding just the immediate success, it's hard to fathom handing Lincecum an All-Star bid -- the righty got chased after five innings on Monday against McKeon and Bochy's old team, the Padres.

"I didn't feel like I had good rhythm. I didn't feel like I had good energy, so I just felt like I was battling through every pitch," Lincecum said after his poor outing on Monday

That dropped Lincecum's record to 6-7, bumped his ERA up to 3.14 and his WHIP to 1.19.

But is he still worthy of an All-Star selection? Bochy thinks so.

"He's good for baseball," Bochy said in defense of his ace. "He's got a lot of fans out there. That's part of it.

"He's somebody people go to watch."

That's actually an interesting point and pretty much the basis for every single All-Star argument in the history of baseball.

See, the fans vote on the starters and therefore pick players who play for the Yankees and Red Sox they want to see. But they don't pick pitchers, and they don't pick the reserves.

That's the manager's job, and this year, the workload fell to Bochy.

He chose his ace, even though Lincecum's not having his best season.

But Lincecum is pitching pretty decently -- it's not like he's only being picked for his name value.

He's fourth in the National League in strikeouts (only Clayton Kershaw, Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee -- all of whom made the roster as well -- have more) and 16th in ERA.

The former is pretty indicative of Lincecum's success, and while the latter won't win him any more Cy Young Awards, it's not like he's been bad.

In fact, Timmy's ERA is better than the Marlins' closest thing to an "ace," Anibal Sanchez.

So maybe McKeon's just bitter.

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