Baseball fans, this Year of the Pitcher is the gift that keeps on giving. Last night, Colby Lewis dominated the San Francisco Giants as the Texas Rangers took Game 3. Tonight, 21-year old rookie Madison Bumgarner took the hill for the Giants looking to turn the tables and deliver with a similarly remarkable outing. Young, calm, and collected, with a fearless attitude and a repertoire few young pitchers have, Bumgarner built upon Lewis’s brilliance.
He got himself in trouble during the regular season when he was hitting 95 on the radar gun. He was trying too hard, and when a pitcher tries to increase their velocity wildness tends to ensue. On this Halloween night he just pitched, staying in the 91-93 range, and that made all the difference. His fastball wasn’t the only pitch that was flowing free and easy; the location and movement of his changeup and slider also bedazzled the Rangers hitters. And it didn’t help Texas any that his counterpart, Tommy Hunter, lacked his efficiency.
Hunter was fifth in the American League in a category that should have made Rangers fans hesitant to trust the big lefthander entering his Game 4 start. He pitched to the fifth highest percentage of contact in the league, and he didn’t fool many Giants in a game Texas had to have. He managed to throw two scoreless innings to begin his outing, but balls were hit hard, far too many pitches were thrown, and walks were issued. It was only a matter of time before the Giants broke through.
Not surprisingly, they did in the third. Andres Torres started the frame by roping a double down the left-field line, and then, one out later, jogged home as Aubrey Huff hit a moonshot deep into the seats in right: a high drive that stayed inside the foul pole, riled the Giants dugout, and silenced an already nervous crowd. Huff, who had played in 1,479 regular season games before reaching this his first postseason, dropped his bat upon making thunderous contact and watched its flight as the few thousand San Francisco fans in attendance cheered. Huff said afterward he had a notion the two runs he plated may have been all Bumgarner would need. “The way he was pitching it looked like that would be about it.”
It wasn’t all the Giants would score, but his blast certainly was enough for the 6’4″ right-hander. Bumgarner took the 2-0 advantage and ran with it, mowing down the Rangers with ease. Only one hit was allowed through five innings, becoming the first pitcher since John Stuper to issue just one base-knock through that many frames in a World Series. In Stuper’s case, with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982, the Milwaukee Brewers were befuddled in Game 6 of a series the Cardinals went on to win. Bumgarner, like Stuper, had the chance to put the Giants on the doorstep of a championship, and he did that in extraordinary fashion.
He received plenty of help defensively, as second baseman Freddy Sanchez made play after play to prolong Texas’s pain. He tagged out a runner trying to go to second, turned double plays, made leaping grabs, and covered a tremendous amount of ground to turn sure-fire singles into groundouts. Sanchez, a former batting champion with the Pittsburgh Pirates, wasn’t the only Giant flashing the leather behind Bumgarner, as left-fielder Cody Ross and shortstop Edgar Renteria made their presence felt as well. Bumgarner’s performance on the mound was already too much for the Rangers to handle. The defensive display behind him only made their comeback effort that much more difficult.
Just in case, the Giants tacked on some insurance late just as they did in the first two games of the series. In the top of the seventh, the hit-and-run was put on with Andres Torres at the plate and Renteria on first. Renteria, who is reportedly thinking about retiring at season’s end, took off on an 0-1 pitch from Darren Oliver and sped around the bases as Torres crushed the offering into the right-center gap. If Renteria is to hang up his spikes, he is riding off into the sunset in style. He, who is playing in his seventh postseason and third World Series, scored easily, rewarded by Torres after reaching for the third time.
Bumgarner had 79 pitches through six innings. It took Hunter, who lasted only four innings, 79 pitches to get his first swing and a miss. Think about that. Bumgarner had only produced five whiffs with the same amount of pitches, but when contact was made weak swings were the result. Hunter fooled relatively no one during his short outing, while Bumgarner had the Rangers searching for answers. None would be found.
A fourth run was tacked on by Buster Posey, who socked his first home-run of the postseason to dead center in the eighth. It was meaningful to Posey, I presume, but was far from necessary. Bumgarner sent down all three he faced in the bottom half. With eight innings in the books he was congratulated in the dugout, signifying the end of his night. Brian Wilson would enter, trying to preserve the shutout.
Bumgarner should have been given a chance to become the first rookie pitcher to throw a complete game shutout in the World Series since 1948, but the ninth was no different with Wilson on the hill. The Rangers went down just as they did in the first eight, and with that Texas was shut out at home for just the second time all season.
San Francisco is one win away from their first World Series title since they were the New York Giants way back in 1954. They can secure the crown in Game 5, pitting Tim Lincecum against Cliff Lee. A battle of the aces is on the horizon, and the Year of the Pitcher will undoubtedly continue.
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Author and owner of the Swamigp’s Sports Blog, Nick loves to write about his hometown Portland Trail Blazers as well as the Boston Red Sox. 