What’s wrong with Timmy?

Big Time Timmy Jim is in big time trouble. Tim Lincecum‘s control problems have become glaringly obvious over his past three starts.

The two-time Cy Young award winner walked five batters for the third straight game and got batted around last night by a Washington Nationals team of Adam Dunn, Ryan Zimmerman and a bunch of guys that I guarantee you’ve never heard of.

Timmy can’t seem to find his rhythm. He’s getting behind in the count on nearly every batter he’s facing.  And runners are stealing off him like Winona Ryder in a thrift store. Lincecum has allowed 15 straight stolen bases, including four last night.

Even an extra day of rest didn’t help. And the worse thing of all about it? You can see it on his face. He’s lost. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he needs to smoke a bowl and chillax.

It’s clear to me (from my 42″ HD LCD anyway) that this is not a cracked fingernail or finger blister problem, as some reports have suggested. There’s definitely something wrong with Lincecum’s mechanics.

You can really see it when he pitches from the stretch as opposed to the windup. When he’s pitching with nobody on, the rhythm looks good — the ball is delivered with the kind of velocity (94-96 mph) that we’re used to seeing from the Freak. But when he’s in the stretch, it’s almost as if he is forgetting to add any zip to it (he’s losing about 3 or 4 mph on the heater). The breaking balls aren’t breaking as nastily as they were just a month ago. And the fastballs are all over the place.

Pitching and bullpen coaches Dave Righetti and Mark Gardner will work with Lincecum over the next few days to figure out where the hitch is.

Hopefully they’ll figure it out fast because it certainly is not going to get any easier for him to win his next start. On Monday afternoon (Memorial Day), Lincecum will face the Rockies’ Ubaldo Jimenez (who pitched eight scoreless innings last night). Here’s hoping that it’s a memorable outing for Timmy.