SF Giants' Tim Lincecum looks deep for answers

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Any day now, second-guessing Tim Lincecum will require the ability to critique at the speed of sound. Go any slower, and he'll probably beat you to the point.

He'll agree that he dropped too much weight too quickly in the offseason, when he peeled back his fondness for fast food and started swimming away calories. Others have said the same thing as the first part of this season went awry for the two-time Cy Young Award winner, but only Lincecum could do something about it.

He said Saturday that he had put 10 of the lost 33 pounds back onto his sinewy physique, pushing the scales up to 167.

"Last year, I'd eat anything I wanted and I didn't even care. I was like, 'I don't care, I'm fat, I'm thicker than I'm used to being and I'm doing fine.' Then my body started feeling different. My legs started feeling the effects of the 30-plus pounds I'd put on," Lincecum said. "But what's happened is then I just completely changed it. I don't think that's a smart move either. ... I got rid of it way too fast, drastically."

On Friday night, he regained something else. After a train-wreck first inning, he sought out fellow right-hander Ryan Vogelsong in the dugout and started venting his anger. Vogelsong, a master at balancing poise and intensity, reminded Lincecum that anger could be his ally.

"I used to have a chip on my shoulder. ... I had Napoleon's syndrome just because, you know, I wasn't a big guy," Lincecum said. "I had that pissed-off feeling of trying to prove people wrong. I think that's kind of the edge I need."

Yet he fumed in the dugout, telling Vogelsong, "I don't know how not to be mad."

Vogelsong, he said, replied: "Don't worry. Just know what you're mad about."

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants throws from the mound against the Oakland Athletics during their MLB Baseball Game on Friday June 22, 2012 at the Oakland Coliseum, in Oakland California. Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants throws from the mound against the Oakland Athletics during their MLB Baseball Game on Friday June 22, 2012 at the Oakland Coliseum, in Oakland California. Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close SF Giants' Tim Lincecum looks deep for answers 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Pitching coach Dave Righetti already had said something similar, telling Lincecum to take out his anger on the A's, who had a 3-0 lead after the disastrous, 43-pitch first.

At that point, the idea that Lincecum would last five more innings and allow no more hits seemed preposterous. The bullpen had been active in the first, much to manager Bruce Bochy's distress.

"That was the last thing I wanted to do," Bochy said. "This would have been rock bottom for the kid. And of course, he would have had to deal with all the questions and all the debates on what to do, what's next."

He appears to have been dealing with those questions already, in his own way. Though it's tempting for his elders, from employers to members of the media, to call Lincecum a kid, he is not. He turned 28 nine days ago, and he talks about losing the recovery powers of his youth.

"My body talks to me more now. I'm kind of, I want to say, coming to terms with my mortality," Lincecum said. "I always thought, 'Oh, I'm never going to be sore.' Like as a kid growing up, I was never sore. I never hurt, I could bounce back from things. I was like, I don't even know, what kind of animal rebounds from everything? A dog. They bump their heads and forget about it four seconds later."

Lincecum was heartened by his Friday rebound, but he has no illusions that one start can fix whatever has led him to a 2-8 record and an unfathomable 6.07 ERA.

"For me to say this is going to be the light switch that turns on and changes everything, I can't really say that," he said. "I still gave up three runs. I take that in the back of my mind. It's just slicing unneeded pieces of clay away from the masterpiece, or the work of art you're trying to make. And for me, that's - I wouldn't say reinventing myself - but finding the edges."

Not long after a dreadful start in Seattle, his hometown, Lincecum called his father, Chris. He had planned to stop turning to his dad for baseball consultations, but the conversation went in that direction anyway.

"He's my dad. Regardless of what I want to talk about, at some point, he's going to make me talk about something I don't necessarily want to," Lincecum told reporters after Friday's game. "With that, you've got to understand he's on my side. ... There's an innate kind of comfort just talking to him. When you get past that 10 minutes of bickering with each other, it turns into an actual good conversation and it has a good rhythm to it."

Friday's USA Today contained quotes from Chris Lincecum, defending his son and suggesting that a Bay Area obsession with Tim's 2012 shortcomings might lead him to sign elsewhere after 2013. His son's excellence over the past five seasons seemed to have been forgotten, he said.

The younger Lincecum often has said he expects to be judged by what he has done lately, and when offered the chance to say he could rebound just as he had after a dreadful August 2010, he thoroughly rejected the theory.

"I think that was very different than what's happening now. To be honest, I was lazy. I was a lazier person" in 2010, Lincecum said. Told that he needed to upgrade his fitness, he rebounded in time to deliver a blistering September and set up a ride in San Francisco's first World Series parade.

"Now, I'm working as hard as (my fellow pitchers), not because I feel like I need to keep up with them, but because I know the game and I need to," he said. "I'm a big believer in karma and things happen for a reason, and that August for me was a big wake-up call. And this, I think, this is a different animal."

In addition to extra fitness work and his diet adjustments, Lincecum said he reviews game video more closely these days to monitor his mechanics, a topic he frequently discusses with the media.

The one hazard in all this reflection is that it can interfere with an athlete's instincts. Lincecum seems aware of that, too. He said he had discussed the importance of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach with reliever Javier Lopez on Friday night.

"Last night was the closest I think I got back to being myself," Lincecum said. "Until last night, (the KISS theory) was eluding me. To find things in the midst of s- is kind of nice and refreshing."