FG on Fox: Madison Bumgarner’s Place in Postseason History

Last night, Madison Bumgarner took the mound in Game 1 of the World Series, and he did exactly what Giants fans expected; he dominated the Royals and gave his team a leg up on their quest for another championship. This is becoming old hat for Bumgarner, who is putting together a fantastic postseason track record, especially with his performances this year.

Last night was Bumgarner’s fifth start of the 2014 postseason; he has pitched at least seven innings in all five of them, totaling 38.2 innings overall. In doing so, Bumgarner became just the seventh pitcher in baseball history to have five starts of seven innings or more in a single postseason. Let’s see how he stacks up against the other six who have done it.

Pitcher	Season	Innings	Runs Allowed
Madison Bumgarner	2014	38.2	7
Cliff Lee	2009	40.1	10
Randy Johnson	2001	40.0	7
Curt Schilling	2001	48.2	6
Greg Maddux	1995	38.0	12
Orel Hershiser	1988	42.1	7
Deacon Phillippe	1903	44.0	19

You’ll notice that all of the pitchers — excluding one, who pitched five of the eight postseason games his team played — are from the modern era, as the expanded postseason makes it possible for a pitcher to make five starts in a postseason, something that generally wasn’t true before the addition of the wild card. Bumgarner has even an extra advantage, as the play-in game set him up to make six starts if the World Series goes at least five games; only Schilling in 2001 and Chris Carpenter in 2011 have made six starts in a postseason previously.

But being handed the ball in critical situations this often is, by itself, a marker of a pitcher’s greatness. There’s a reason you don’t see any mediocre hurlers on the list above, and the fact that they were able to consistently complete seven innings weeds out pitchers who weren’t dominating when they were given the ball. Bumgarner has placed himself in some seriously elite company.

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