Lincoln’s adjustments effected him mentally

Brad Lincoln was among one of the eight guys called up from Triple-A Indy on Tuesday. Lincon had a dissapointing stay when he was re-called earlier this season.

John Russell said his use for the remainder of the season will be out of the Bullpen, something Lincoln hasn’t done since being drafted in 2006.

The move is to help Lincoln work on his mechanics and it in no way suggests he will become a reliever in the future.

“We’ll get him built back up a little bit,” manager John Russell said. “He’s going to have some time to do some things with [pitching coach] Ray [Searage] and get back on track.”

Lincoln said he has recovered fully from neck stiffness that caused him to go on the DL.

“The box score might not have shown it, but I felt my stuff and velocity was good,” said Lincoln, who combined to allow six earned runs on seven hits and four walks in 4 1/3 innings. “I was just finding barrels. But as far as how I felt? I probably felt the best since getting back from being up here.”

Brad did say that the minor adjustments that were made when he was starting with the Pirates effected him mentally. [Perhaps a good reason why Joe Kerrigan was let go. He changed a lot of the Pitchers mehanics, and lets face it, the Pirates pitching has crumbled this season.] 

“It wasn’t a major mechanical delivery change, but there were checkpoints that were kind of just different from what I was used to and maybe made me focus too much on stuff there which, in turn, made me not focused on getting the hitter out,” Lincoln said. “So it was more mental for me.”