when people were constantly pimping for him to be regarded as a top prospect, cyber blowjobs, etc…

Im just about ready to get on the bandwagon now, though.

Angel Villalona has indeed made strides this season. He has nearly doubled his anemic walk rate, while nearly halving his strikeout rate. It appears to me that he has closed up what appeared to me to be an open stance when I saw him on the screen at www.milb.com a year ago.

What really surprised me about AnVil was his soft hands. He’s actually a pretty good first baseman, although I see that tonight he did commit his second error of the season.

Shortstop Brandon Crawford has perhaps been the Giants’ biggest minor league surprise, batting over .400 and leading the Little Giants with four home runs. Crawford is a local Bay Arean.

Nick Noonan has a .859 OPS, but that is somewhat illusory, as his 18 strikeouts in 50 at bats would indicate.

I would say that thus far for San Jose, Crawford has been the biggest winner, while Noonan has been the biggest loser.

I like Alderson, but throwing around the term like that really weakens its significance.

My point was not that Alderson or Villalona are bad, or bad prospects – just that they were overhyped a lot and especially on here, where we had to hear about them quite a lot….

It was mostly in jest anyway.

There is nothing wrong with Alderson. After seeing him pitch San Jose’s playoff opener last year, I wrote here that I felt he was little more than a confident change up away from being major league ready. He just doesn’t appear to have the ceiling of Rick Porcello.

Porcello had a poor outing tonight and has now given up a disturbing five homers in 18.0 innings. His 11 strikeouts aren’t lights out by any means. But he has also done some things well as a 20-year-old pitching in the major leagues.

He has averaged 6.0 innings per start, which is more than either Jonathan Sanchez or Barry Zito averaged last season.

He has averaged 14.3 pitches per inning, or about two pitches per inning less than Tim Lincecum during Tim’s career.

His 1.17 WHIP is better than Tim’s, primarily due to Rick’s walking only three batters in his 18 innings.

Rick’s 27 ground outs compared to 16 air outs makes him much more a ground ball pitcher than any Giants pitcher and indicates his horrendous home run rate may be a bit of an abberation.

His 4.50 ERA isn’t great, but it’s actually pretty good for a 20-year-old pitching in the majors. At 22, Tim LIncecum’s ERA was 4.00.

Nothing wrong with Tim Alderson. He looks as if he will have a successful career. But his ceiling doesn’t look all that much different from Rick Porcello’s floor.

has looked outstanding so far this year.

And here I thought slurve was a mixture of a slider and a curve ball.

Slurve, I post elsewhere besides this spot, but if you have read all I have posted about Tim Lincecum, you have probably learned as much about Tim — both positive AND negative — from me as you have learned from any non-professional source.

To the best of my knowledge, I saw live more of Tim’s minor league career than anyone aside from Tim himself. The only possible exception I can think of is the Giants’ Dick Tidrow, who I believe was as excited about Tim as I was.

And just how far did I lead you wrong regarding Tim?

We’re talking about the reigning Cy Young Award winner, a pitcher who after a slow start that had many worrying about overuse, has bounced back with only one run combined in back-to-back eight-inning outings in which he struck out a combined 25 batters while walking only one.

We’re talking about the best strikeout starting pitcher in baseball today, the guy who in his last 38 outings has struck out an even 300 batters. The guy who struck out more batters in a single season than any Giants pitcher since Christy Mathewson, 105 years prior, when Christy struck out two more batters than the 265 Tim fanned in 2008.

Do you realize that over Tim’s last 23 starts, he has averaged 12.01 strikeouts per nine innings? The only pitchers who have struck out more per nine innings over a full season are Randy Johnson (who I beileve is pitching as we speak), Pedro Martinez and Kerry Wood. So far this season Tim has struck out 12.95 batters per nine innings, which if he were magically able to continue at that same pace would be the third-best rate ever over a full season. And that is with two starts to begin the season that were bad enough to have many worrying that his arm was burning out.

Two winters ago I suggested to John that he make Tim his #1 pitching prospect. Tim has most certainly justified my faith in him.

Now, would you like to know some negatives about him?

. He allows far to many hitters leading off the inning to reach base.

. He doesn’t throw nearly enough first strikes.

. While his control is improving, it is only average at this point.

. While he has finally made an effort to improve this season, his ability to hold runners on base in his first two seasons may have been the worst of any starting pitcher in baseball.

. While he is plenty athletic, he is off-balance on his follow through and thus isn’t in good fielding position. While he has yet to make an error, his fielding to date has been just OK, in part due to his inability to hold runners on. The follow-through leaves him vulnerable to line drives back through the middle, and he was hit by one just last night. Last season he left a game after being struck on the knee, and four summers ago he was hit in the head while pitching in the Cape Cod League.

. Because of his less-than-stellar control and the sharp downward break on his secondary pitches, Tim is one of the worst starters when it comes to wild pitches.

. While he is improving in this regard, Tim can lose the plate for a few batters. His pitches per inning aren’t excessive, but he often isn’t able to pitch as deeply into games as one would ideally desire, without throwing a high number of pitches.

. Twice already this season, he has allowed opposing pitchers to drive in runs against him.

While when I post, I am usually writing more in the style of a columnist than when I actually do sports reporting, I think you’re off-base when you call my posts biased.

If I were to express my opinions on Tim and didn’t come up with a highly favorable review, then I WOULD be biased.

And if you didn’t learn a few things you didn’t know about Tim Lincecum before reading this, you weren’t paying attention. Both positive and negative.

Thus far I haven’t led John wrong. And I’m not likely to lead you astray, either. If you don’t feel that you learn from what I post here, just skip over it.

To complain about something one can easily ignore seems quite ignorant to me. Instead of complaining about how I am biased toward Tim, why don’t you post the necessary negatives to put the picture in proper focus?

It’s a lot easier to complain than to perform something positive, isn’t it?

Barry Zito pitched quite well yesterday. Perhaps he realized it could easily have been he, rather than Jonathan Sanchez, who was skipped in the rotation due to the Giants’ two days off this week.

The Giants actually got phenomenal starts this time around from EACH of their five starters, beginning with Sanchez last Friday night. I believe that between the five starters, the two runs off Matt Cain Tuesday night were the only runs allowed in that string.

During that period, Sanchez got himself straightened out after a rough first outing, Lincecum pitched perhaps the best game of his career, Randy Johnson yielded only a single hit over seven innings, Zito pitched a like number of shutout innings, and Cain showed that if he is given some runs, he can actually win.

The Giants were said by some to have perhaps the best rotation in the NL. Up until last Friday, that wasn’t even CLOSE to being the case. Since that time, it certainly has been.

Oh, wait. I forgot to even mention Madison Bumgarner. :)