Mad Bum the Throwback.
 

After watching my beloved Giants win their 3rd World Series Title in 5 years, I, like everyone else watching, was spellbound by Madison Bumgarner's brilliant performance.

I KNEW he would go this game, but I was counting on the legendary performance of Randy Johnson (maybe a couple of innings....).

As the game unfolded, at some point (the 7th?) I realized that he was actually going to try to finish this off, himself. He did so in dominant fashion.

When the dust had settled, I realized that what I witnessed equalled the legendary feats of Babe Ruth in many ways... except that I wasn't reading about it in a book or picturing it in my mind's eye while staring at a baseball card or old photo. This was happening NOW. That performance would have fit comfortably in ANY legendary venue at ANY legendary time with ANY legendary figures. The only difference was this never had the time to accumulate any dust. We watched the kind of history that we love reading about, but this time we could watch every nuance with multiple camera angles and know that it was all true. MadBum's performance was just the crowning touch on an amazing post-season run through many talented teams. (His mind-boggling numbers would look even more stellar had he not thrown that ball down the line on a bunt, earlier in the playoffs.)

Congrats to my New York / San Francisco Giants! And congrats to the man that picked them up and carried them to the glory. The man from Hickory. Madison Bumgarner... all of 25 years old.

BTW: if you want to read a wonderfully written account of his upbringing check out this excellent New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/sp...ef=sports&_r=0

My favorite line from his dad:

McGraw would have loved him.

It's funny you really get at a feeling I was having as well. His performance, now that you look at the numbers, is unquestionably historic. It was almost numbing to watch it happen in real time. There's no music from The Natural in the background. No slow motion action shot. And yet as a Giants fan, I mean, did it really seem that insane? It felt like typical Bumgarner when he's on. You knew he was going to go the rest of the game by that 2nd inning. There weren't any real struggles, except for the outfield play at the end. But the context is what made it that amazing.

It was simultaneously predictable and undramatic and awe-inspiring and mind blowing. It makes me wonder what it was like seeing Mathewson or Gibson at their best. Probably something like what we saw yesterday.

And great article, makes me like him even more!

Impressive thing was he didn't overthrow at all... you would think he would given the magnitude of the situation... he just took his time and made great throws... I saw on one of the Giants fan blogs...where each of his pitches to each hitter was charted...and just about every pitch was either painting the outside or inside corner...down below or just above the strike zone and nothing down the middle...

Ricky Y

...and here to confirm and validate our thoughts on this subject, none other than legendary writer Roger Angell in the current New Yorker, titled "THE BEST":

The rest of the piece is (obviously) worth reading:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/best

It was amazing to see that even going into the ninth inning, the Giants had no one warming up in the bullpen. Bumgarner was not even given an option- he was going to finish and win that game.

Posey deserves some credit too. The pitch sequences were perfect, and I don't think Bumgarner shook him off even once.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colum...2805cb3da.html

Great article by Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post Dispatch

It certainly was one of those performances that not only shows up in statistics, but passes the eye test as well. I put part of your quote in bold. I wonder how Bumgarner's performance would have changed if MLB had the 20-second time clock on him between pitches like they are playing around with in the Arizona Fall League. Not wanting to hijack the thread or lead it away from MadBum's historic series......the quote just had me thinking.

Tim

Simply dominant. Without him, the Giants would have lost in 5 or 6.

Tim, I don't think it would have made a whit of difference, because it would not have been just Bumgarner on the clock, so the entire league would have had to adjust. My guess is that Mad would have just worked faster with probably little difference (since he would have been pitching that way all year up to this point).

One could also wonder if the Giants would have won had they been using gloves from the early part of the 20th century, since Panik would not have made that play. But again, he may have been positioned appropriately different and made the play a lot easier as well. Or if the DH hadn't been invented, or... :)

It was a truly dominant performance for MadBum. He ended up throwing a career high number of innings and 70 more innings than last year - I hope he doesn't suffer an injury next year as pitchers with such large increases in innings often do. Even if he does I think you would find anyone who would have done anything differently - he won the World Series for the team.

Bryan, He appears to be a very 'loose' pitcher with his arm motion, so he has less of a chance at injury than some of the 'tighter' motions we see. Still, I hope the same as well.

He'll be fine. Whether he now becomes one of the game's elite pitchers will be interesting to see. He's only 67-49 lifetime so far, although 2014 was easily his best season to date.

Absolutely. These two have had great chemistry from day 1. They both came up as September call ups in 2009, both had critical roles as rookies in 2010. They also received a lot of pub as a rookie battery in game 4 2010 WS when Bum shut the Rangers out for 8 innings, preventing a series tie. I love the way these two work location. Not sure I've seen anyone, at least recently, so effectively go up the ladder on hitters. He misses down a couple inches and some of those may get launched, but as it was he got swings and misses, and pop ups. They've both said they spend a lot of time before games, even innings game planning, so come game time, there are few surprises.

MadBum is definitely a throw back (humble competitor, spurns pitch count, takes hitting very seriously, etc). Re- stats, he's been better than his stats. His 13-13 year's numbers were greatly influenced by a bad start vs the Twins (gave up like 7-8 in less than 1 IP), and started 0-5 due to terrible run support.. But he was dominant much of that year, as he was in the 13-9 year (Giants losing record). I think his pitching numbers may eventually look gaudier (if team continues to win), but he'll be the bell cow no matter what. I also really can't wait to see if he becomes an even better hitter.