Texas Rangers’ Cliff Lee throws during practice on Wednesday for Game 1 of baseball’s World Series against the San Francisco Giants which starts today in San Francisco. (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO — Major League Baseball’s ‘’Year of the Pitcher’’ climaxes with the World Series, which opens on Wednesday with another scintillating showdown pitting Cliff Lee of the Rangers against Giants ace Tim Lincecum.

With six no-hitters thrown this season, including one in the playoffs, pitchers have dominated headlines in 2010 and Game One of the Fall Classic could continue the trend.

Texas ace left-hander Lee has a 3-0 record this postseason with a tiny 0.75 earned run average, giving up 13 hits with 34 strikeouts in 24 innings and only one walk.

Lincecum, the long-haired, rail-thin right-hander nicknamed ‘’The Freak’’, has gone 2-1 with a 1.93 earned run average, 30 strikeouts, 14 hits and five walks in 23.1 innings.

The pitchers were asked at AT&T Park during workouts on the eve of the best-of-seven World Series what impressed them about their counterpart.

‘’He works in and out on both sides of the plate, which allows him a lot of freeze strike threes, guys looking,’’ Lincecum said on Tuesday about Lee.

‘’When you’re able to throw strikes on both sides of the plate like that, he’s going to have a lot of good success. So hopefully we can pick out a pitch and do something with it.’’

Lee said he likes the unorthodox way San Francisco’s Lincecum pitches, from his motion to his approach to hitters.

‘’He obviously knows what he’s doing with the ball,’’ Lee told reporters.

"The way he does it, no one else does it that way. I like that. I like when unorthodox works and it works to that kind of an extent, back-to-back Cy Young winner,’’ said Lee, a Cy Young winner himself in 2008 for the Cleveland Indians.

‘’He throws in a way that you probably wouldn’t want to show your kid how to throw. It’s very hard to do what he does, the way he does it and to be that consistent.’’