Madison Bumgarner, Yoenis Cespedes, and Two Extremes

Johnny Cueto may have had the better 2016 regular season, but when the calendar flips to October, Madison Bumgarner becomes the unquestioned ace of the San Francisco Giants — their most important player. The postseason legend of Bumgarner grew last night, thanks to a complete game shutout in a 3-0 victory against the New York Mets at Citi Field in the National League’s Wild Card play-in game.

No Met hit better than Yoenis Cespedes this season, and Neil Walker, the only position player who accrued more value according to WAR, has been out since the end of August with a back injury that required surgery. Cespedes was the Mets’ most important position player last night, and he also had a team-worst -.101 Win Probability Added, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, helping to strand two of the only six batters Bumgarner allowed to reach base.

In a showdown between the Giants’ best pitcher and the Mets’ best position player, the most important showdown, Bumgarner won by KO in four rounds. And he did it by putting his hand on the “approach” lever and pushing it all the way toward the extreme.

See, there’s some fundamental principles in understanding how Cespedes works as a hitter. He crushes low fastballs, and he crushes offspeed stuff. That leaves one real pitch type — the high fastball — as a weakness. This isn’t a secret; it’s something I wrote about during last year’s postseason, and it’s probably the first thing any pitcher with a scouting report knows about Cespedes. Last night, Bumgarner had his scouting report.

This year, Cespedes OPS’d 1.087 on fastballs located in the lower half of the zone or beyond, the 10th-highest mark by any of the 162 batters who saw at least 1,000 total fastballs this year. On upper-half fastballs, though, Cespedes OPS’d just .579, representing the third-largest difference among that same pool of players. There’s no hiding where Cespedes is most beatable:

Bumgarner needed 18 pitches to retire Cespedes four times last night. Of those 18 pitches, 15 were fastballs. Here’s where catcher Buster Posey set up for the first 12 of those heaters (he actually didn’t even give spots for the three pitches in the final ninth-inning at-bat — they knew what they were doing by that point):

This wasn’t your typical “exploit the hitter’s weakness when you can” approach; this was a straight-up challenge to Cespedes to adjust. For the first 12 fastballs Bumgarner threw Cespedes, Posey only set up a low target once. And here’s how Bumgarner executed.

Plate appearance No. 1: Pop out

Four fastballs, all set up high, all executed high.

Plate appearance No. 2: Strikeout

Posey actually set up for the first pitch low, but Bumgarner missed up, which is a fine place to miss given the circumstances, and then Posey asked for the next four pitches to be high fastballs, and Bumgarner executed each time. After nine consecutive elevated fastballs to start the game, Bumgarner perfectly spotted two curveballs in the dirt; Cespedes fouled off the first and whiffed at the second. Just unfair.

Plate appearance No. 3: Strikeout

Two fastballs, high target, high execution, a curveball flipped in for a called second strike, and a final high-spot, high-executed fastball for another whiff. The final pitch got this swing:

Yeah, I think they had the right idea with the high fastball.

Plate appearance No. 4: Fly out

This is when Posey had given up on setting locations. After that strikeout swing in the third at-bat, did it really need to be said?

In all, Cespedes saw 18 pitches. Of those 18 pitches, 15 were fastballs. And of those 15 fastballs, 15 were located in the upper-half of the zone or beyond. To put that into a percentage, 83% of the pitches Yoenis Cespedes saw last night were elevated fastballs, and to give that context, here are his season-highs in games in which he batted more than one time:

Yoenis Cespedes, highest percentage of elevated fastballs seen by game, 2016

1. Last night: 83%
2. 9/25/16: 55%
3. 5/23/16: 53%
4. 5/13/16: 50%
5. 5/18/16: 50%

The degree to which Cespedes was exploited last night was laughable. Only twice all year were more than half of the pitches he saw in a game elevated fastballs. Last night, the Giants tried to make it every pitch, and they just about pulled it off. Even spanning the scope of his entire career, last night’s approach was unprecedented.

And it was damn-near unprecedented for Bumgarner, too. Bumgarner certainly came at Cespedes with the high heat, but he wasn’t the only one getting that treatment.

Madison Bumgarner, highest percentage of elevated fastballs thrown by game, 2016

1. Last night: 50%
2. 8/13/16: 43%
3. 7/22/16: 41%
4. 4/20/16: 41%
5. 4/04/16: 40%

Bumgarner hadn’t thrown that many high fastballs in a game all year before the Wild Card game. Cespedes had never seen that many high fastballs in a game in his entire career.

And there’s another way in which Bumgarner’s approach last night was unique. Not only did he throw more fastballs than he’s thrown all year, he threw more curveballs, too. Our own Eno Sarris just yesterday wrote about how Bumgarner fixed his curve. Bumgarner’s thrown more curves over his last five starts than in any five-start stretch of his career, and last night, 89% of his pitches were either fastballs or curveballs, a Rich Hill-like approach that ranks as the highest combined single-game total of Bumgarner’s entire career. And it’s an approach that makes sense, given the reliance on elevated fastballs to set up the hook.

Cespedes’ season is over, so there’s no use looking forward for him, but it now becomes fascinating to see how Bumgarner progresses through the postseason. Particularly considering Bumgarner and the Giants now move on to face the Cubs, who, despite having the league’s best offense, show a larger-than-average negative OPS differential against elevated heaters. Leave it to postseason-Bumgarner and even year-Giants to match up well against baseball’s best team. This could get interesting.