Tim Lincecum's performance in Game 1 of the 2010 National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves is one of the Giants' all-time great outings.
As it turns out, the pitch Lincecum used to shut down batter after batter during that postseason was made possible in part by his teammate, Matt Cain. Lincecum's slider wasn't added to his repertoire until early September 2010, after a frank conversation with his fellow Giants starter Cain.
“He said, ‘Man, I don’t feel like I have that pitch like I used to,'” Cain recently told The Athletic's Andrew Baggarly. “He had gotten so used to throwing his fastball and split-change. So I started talking about how I learned my slider.
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“All I did was show him some things, talk to him about a couple things, and he just went with it.”
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Lincecum struck out 14 Braves in that playoff opener, going a complete nine innings while allowing just two hits, as the Giants won 1-0.
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Cain recalls being mesmerized in the Giants' dugout watching the ace mow down Atlanta hitters.
“I was really and truly a fan,” Cain told Baggarly. “I wasn’t watching [the Braves] thinking, ‘Hey, this is what I need to do against this team.’ I mean, I should’ve been. But it was just pure enjoyment watching him pitch and being totally engulfed in the game. And it was our first postseason, so I didn’t know what we were getting into. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is unreal, this whole atmosphere, and our guy is just dealing. This is awesome.’
“It was a phenomenal game under the circumstances for a guy who had never pitched in the postseason. It was truly unreal to witness.”
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Over six games in that 2010 postseason, Lincecum had a 2.43 ERA in 37 innings, and registered 43 strikeouts. Cain wasn't too shabby either, famously not allowing an earned run in 21 1/3 innings en route to the Giants' first-ever title in San Francisco.
Lincecum continued using his slider a ton in 2011, throwing it a career-high 866 times and giving up a paltry .206 batting average on the pitch, according to Fangraphs. But as Lincecum's career started to deteriorate in 2012, so did his slider's effectiveness -- opposing batters hit a much-improved .260 on 719 sliders thrown in 2012 -- as the beloved Giants pitcher continued to try to rediscover his old Cy Young form.
Regardless, Giants fans will be eternally grateful to both Lincecum and Cain for bringing three championships to San Francisco.