Tim Lincecum's bizarre turn

Its been a tough year for the marketing department over at Third and King. The Panda Hat has been on the DL (again) and has some legal issues. The Giraffe is still trying to figure out how to hit. The Beard is out, way out. And The Young Cy Young has reached such a parlous state thatget thisthe Giants are 0-8 in his last eight starts since May 4, and 22-5 when he doesnt appear.

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Consider that for a moment. And then wrap a ticket campaign around it in true Giant fashion.Come See Tim Lincecum Not Pitch. Its a Freak-Free Friday. Dont PanicHes Just Throwing On The Side.Lets be honest herethis is bizarre by any stretch. Not that Lincecum isnt entitled to have a really bad stretchevery pitcher has one of these, some have several, and a few never pull out of them. Its the nature of the game.But the Giants approach has always been to leap on a trend with both feet and so it has been with representatives like Lincecum, Pablo Sandoval, Brandon Belt and Brian Wilson. When you market to players, you have to endure their down times.Sure, Melky Cabrera is the new big deal, but The Melk Men (sigh) crated themselves, as far as we know. And Matt Cain and Buster Posey have either resisted or not captivated anyone enough to wrap an entire marketing campaign around them (thank the celestial office for small favors).But Sandovals issues have been chronicled here, and Belts to a lesser extent. Wilsons are pretty binary; he got hurt. They are what happens When Promotions Go South. You live, you learn.Lincecum, though, is a different matter entirely. The Giants, who are 34-27 despite their fans essential daily valuation of them as outrageously deficient, have gone from mediocre to playoff contenders almost entirely without the pitcher who came to define them in the post-Bonds era. And theres no great sweeping conclusion to draw except that sometimes stuff happens, and that sometimes other stuff happens around that original stuff.Lincecum struggling makes some sense, at least, although the notion that if they pitched him in every game they would finish 0-162 is just pranking with math. But so is the notion that if they never pitched him at all they would go 132-30.Its that theyre so good without him in this difficult stretch or him that makes no sense. This used to be the Zito slot, the one they ate so that they could get to the other four, but Zito is erecting a platform for Comeback Player Of The Year, and Ryan Vogelsong is putting together a second improbably good season. Cain and Madison Bumgarner are, well, Cain and Madison Bumgarner.But Lincecum was as important to that rotation as any of them, so his absence should have caused some level of cratering, and it hasnt. Somewhere in that clubhouse, or on that field, the Giants have absorbed his difficulties and coped with them in a way that they havent coped with Sandovals or Belts.They have dealt with Wilsons well enough, to be fair, but they are also on the Bullpen Injury of the Week program, and the injuries always happen at the RomoCasilla end of the pen rather than the LouxEdlefsen end.But Lincecum? Dramatic falloff. The results in his absence? Absurdly good. And for discernible connective reason.So maybe thats the lesson here. Market all you want the way you want, but baseball runs on its own machinery, both within the team and on the more macro scale. The Giants right now are better with Tim Lincecum in the dugout. No living human would have guessed that possible. So shame on us.Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com