Tim Lincecum Playing In M’s Favor

Aug 14, 2013; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Seattle Mariners starting pitcher

(39) walks back to the dugout after pitching the first inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Worst-case:

The Mariners sign Lincecum to a 3 year/$51 million contract (remember this is an absurd, worst-case scenario). Timmy really wanted a one or two-year deal, but when Jack Z cornered him in a local Bellevue bar he had no choice. In his first season, 2014, he is the number 3 starter and posts numbers that look like Aaron Harang and Joe Saunders genetically mutated together to be one really awfully inconsistent pitcher– although Lincecum will always have a significantly leaner physique than those two. His ERA balloons to 5.20 in the confines of Safeco, and he gets buried in the depths of the Mariners so-so bullpen.

Then in 2015 Lincecum is a shade of himself and loses the rest of the season to a torn ACL suffered when running a 5K in support of Washington’s most recently legalized recreational drug.

By 2016 he is out of baseball, reclining in a Clyde Hill mansion with enough pizza and medicinal herbs to last a lifetime.  And the Mariners get nothing out of his homecoming.