The Ace That Worked
There’s nothing more overrated in the postseason than an ace starting pitcher. Just ask the Dodgers. Or, if you feel like it, you could ask the Cardinals. Or the Nationals, or the Royals, kind of, or the Athletics. Or the Tigers. An ace starting pitcher is just one guy, one member of a way bigger team, and baseball’s about a lot more than the first guy on the mound. There’s nothing more underrated in the postseason than an ace starting pitcher. Just ask the team that just won the postseason.
The Giants didn’t win the World Series because of Madison Bumgarner, but to the extent that one player can be mostly responsible for a championship, Bumgarner’s way up there on the list. It isn’t just that he dominated; it’s that he dominated while throwing literally a third of all the Giants’ playoff innings. Bumgarner was No. 1 on the innings-pitched leaderboard, and he finished with more than No. 2 and No. 3 combined. He also allowed fewer playoff runs than the Pirates. The worst thing Bumgarner threw all month long was a ball that Wilson Ramos bunted. Over the course of October, Pablo Sandoval hit .366 and Hunter Pence had an .875 OPS, and people aren’t really talking about them, because Bumgarner’s almost the whole story.
He mastered the Royals, of course, in Game 1 of the Series. He was somehow even more effective in Game 5. And in Game 7, Bumgarner got to work in relief, but in a starter’s kind of relief, where Bumgarner wasn’t coming out until he got tired, and he didn’t admit to fatigue until a post-dogpile interview. After all of the conversation and hype, Bumgarner turned in an iconic five-inning appearance, an appearance that will overshadow all others, and it was an unusual appearance for Bumgarner in two ways. One, he came out of the bullpen. And two, he just didn’t let the Royals hit strikes. Bumgarner saved a season extreme for a season extreme.
I don’t know where to begin. I guess here: Bumgarner threw 68 pitches, and 50 for strikes. That’s a rate of 74%, and previously in the playoffs, he’d been at 70%. In the regular season, he came in at 68%. What’s implied is that Bumgarner came right after the Royals aggressively in relief, maybe not wanting to waste his bullets. From the sounds of things, Bumgarner was all over the strike zone.
And that’s totally true, except for the part where it’s a complete and utter lie. This is where things get really interesting. Let’s use the Brooks Baseball version of zone rate. Entering Wednesday, combining the regular season and the playoffs, Bumgarner threw 42% of his pitches in the zone. Out of the bullpen in Game 7, Bumgarner threw 29% of his pitches in the zone. That was, for him, a season low. So Bumgarner finished with one of his better strike rates while also finishing with one of his lower zone rates.
There was a generous call or two. I’m not saying Bumgarner didn’t get help. And hell, when Nori Aoki lined out in the fifth, we came worse positioning away from a tie game. But the main story of Bumgarner’s appearance was this: he didn’t throw strikes in the zone because the Royals didn’t make him. And he’s hard enough to hit when he throws strikes in the zone.
Bumgarner folded in the high fastball by the truckload. It was the iconic pitch of the iconic appearance, with high fastballs accounting for 43% of Bumgarner’s pitches. Previously in the playoffs, the rate was 22%. During the regular season, the rate was 23%. Bumgarner established a new career high for average fastball pitch height, and while that’s not exactly a sexy kind of sentence to read, it goes right along with what people who were watching would’ve observed. Bumgarner faced 17 batters. Of those plate appearances, 11 ended with an elevated fastball.
Screenshots of a few of ’em. Lorenzo Cain:
Lorenzo Cain again:
Eric Hosmer’s torso:
And finally, conclusively, there was Bumgarner vs. Salvador Perez:
That’s not enough. This is enough:
Buster Posey set a high target, and he never deviated. Madison Bumgarner set a high target, and he never deviated. Salvador Perez didn’t intend to set a high target, but sometimes he can’t help himself, God bless him, and he at least laid off a couple of those. While he made an out, so did everybody else, and if Sergio Romo’s fastball was the pitch of the last Giants World Series, the one this time is Bumgarner’s fastball up. The last at-bat was a caricature of Bumgarner’s five innings, but then Bumgarner’s October performance was a caricature of an ace starting pitcher. He went silly as long as he needed to.
Cleverly, Bumgarner worked a 1-2-3 seventh inning with one fastball out of nine pitches. To some extent that probably set the remainder up. All he needed was the threat of the other stuff, and the fastball success could follow. There were high fastballs, then there was an interlude, then there were high fastballs again, dangerous again because of the possibility the pitches would be something else out of the hand. At this point I’m overthinking it. The baseball game’s over. There are no more baseball games. When the last game is finished, few people care for an analysis, but moving on from this game means moving on to no games, and I don’t feel ready for that.
Here’s something we know: against the Royals, Madison Bumgarner was absolutely fantastic. Here’s something else we know: if this had happened in June or July, people would say, justifiably, he was great, but then, Royals. Here’s something else we know: Bumgarner was also tremendous before the Royals, and he just wrapped up arguably the greatest postseason performance of all time. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to try to figure out whether this was truly No. 1 — there are too many variables, too many changing conditions. Bumgarner threw more playoff innings than anyone before, but the playoffs are also different than they were before, and I think it should be enough to say Bumgarner did something historic. It’s not important exactly how historic. What’s important is that what Bumgarner did won’t soon be forgotten. We’ll be talking about this month in 30 years, provided baseball isn’t dead by then.
I honestly don’t know how much to make of what Bumgarner did in particular in Game 7. I don’t know what we’re supposed to expect from pitchers pitching under those conditions. The usage had precedent. Josh Beckett did something similar in 2003. But at the same time it’s been extraordinarily rare, which wouldn’t be the case if this were some easy and natural thing. Bumgarner did something few people have done, something he’d never done, and it’s just such an emphatic way to wrap up his streak. Bumgarner didn’t need to be more dominant to have a postseason for the ages. But he deserved to throw the Giants’ final pitch, after having thrown so many of the previous ones.
During the playoffs, the Giants’ three other starters combined to allow 30 runs in 48.1 innings. Knowing only that, it would appear to require a miracle for that team to end up as the World Series champion. In reality it required something like that. The Giants’ miracle has a name and a Carolina accent.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Most of those high fastballs would not have been called strikes in my view. Baseball is all about adjustments, the Royals didn’t adjust and couldn’t lay off that pitch.
Thanks captain obvious
McCarveresque
Kinda tough on ol’ Tim there, aintcha? This one is a lot more Reynoldsian; ol’ Tim more specialized in dressing up the irrelevant and arcane in analyzerish clothing.
Derek Lowe could be a good baseball analyst, providing some color commentary as he was a pitcher and can provide some insight in the more abstract facets of the game. After all, he has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke.
It is shame Derek Lowe now only talks about drugs and molecules.
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.
I don’t know if I was bitter because of what he did to the Pirates or the fact that people were calling him the best left-handed pitcher in the game but I thought Bumgarner was getting waaayyyy too much hype for his postseason pitching (even after game 5). I was just writing this off as having a good stretch against mediocre offenses (excluding the Pirates and Nationals who had good offenses). Game 7 changed that for me and I’m not afraid to admit that I was wrong. I know 5 innings really shouldn’t change that much but what he did coming in and closing out that game is something the bsaeball fan in me will remember for the rest of my life.
Yes Kershaw is still better and is likely to be better going forward. But that does not take away from what MadBum did. Thanks for the memories man.
The Pirates had a great offense this year, but they did much of their damage against right handed pitchers, and were less effective against lefties.
Yay…talking about the Pirates the day after an NL team wins the world series…that’s good right?
I agree with you for the most part. Bumgarner pitched great, but this does not make him a top 3 pitcher in baseball by any stretch. I do think that his 2014 postseason performance will be remembered for years to come, much like Johnson, Schilling, Morris, Koufax.
It’s funny too. Not to take anything away from Bumgarner but there were a few hard hit balls in addition to Aoki’s. Some bad luck on balls in play, or less good luck, and this could have been a valiant but failed effort.
But it happened the way it happened and who knows, maybe the Bumgarner/Posey pitch calling was as amazing as the pitcher. Game 7 of the end of everything 2014 MLB and the aggressive Royals hitters were not going to let anything get by, and Bumgarner/Posey took advantage of that.
Just some regression from their ridiculously good luck on balls in play and sequencing in game 6
Well, let’s see. He faced 17 batters. There were 4 strikeouts and a sac bunt, which leaves twelve swings putting balls into play. And we can probably all agree that the Infante and Gordon singles and the Aoki would-be double were all well hit. So what of the remaining 9? Three infield pop-ups (two foul), three fairly pedestrian fly balls, and three groundouts to the left side, the most challenging of which was probably the Moustakas bouncer against the shift that lost its bounce after ticking off the lip of the infield grass. Pablo picked it across his body and threw out Moustakas by a step, perhaps half a step.
So apart from Aoki and the two singles, the only balls that had a prayer of falling in for a hit were three ground balls hit more or less right at the shortstop.
Posey isn’t getting enough credit for his handling of the staff throughout the play-offs. 17 games straight, with just a coupla innings off in a laugher defeat; but more than that: a number of times the camera lingered on him as he’d look up and down the Royals’ batter to remind himself who this was and where he was standing, and there’d follow a flurry of signs, mostly to disguise the real one, then the set-up, and if the pitcher hit it – a whiff or a squelch or an ideal set-up for the next pitch.
Casey Stengel used to say he’d never want to go into a big game without “my man”. His man was catcher Yogi Berra. In the 1950s, decades before WAR was even thought up, Berra piled up MVP awards and votes every year, because what he did made constantly shifting and often dubious pitching staffs work way better than they should have to protect leads built by the big offense they had. To me, having watched those teams well over 50 years ago, this Giants bunch with their 3 WS wins looks awfully reminiscent, due in largest part because of the Berra/Posey factor.
What’s the data on Lincecum’s 2012 bullpen run? I remember at the time not thinking Lincecum gained any command coming out of the bullpen (and he surely didn’t gain any velocity), and it just seemed like hitters were less prepared to lay off all of his pitches out of the zone.
Derek Lowe in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS… 6 IP on 2 days rest. Saved the series.
I wish Dottie from A League of Their Own told Perez to lay off the high ones.
That was one terrible at bat.
….and Matt Cain is back next year. Hide your lunch money.
if it’s 2010-12 matt cain, then yay! if it’s 2013-14 matt cain, then not so much.
Did anybody notice me last night? Did I become famous with my shitty strike zone?!
pretty sad it was SO bad late. the difference between a 1-1 count and 0-2 can be as game-changing as the reply overturn. and it happened to more than one royal…
I didn’t think it was as bad as some people out there are complaining about, and considering most of the complaints I read are coming from Royals fans… I think there’s some severe hyperbole mixed with bitterness in those comments.
According to baseballsavant, of 12 called strikes, 8 of them were actually balls. Conversely, none of MB’s called balls were in the zone. That is flat out atrocious, but it helps explain how great MB was.
http://baseballsavant.com/popup/pitchChart.php?hfPT=&hfZ=&hfGT=R%7CPO%7C&hfPR=5%7C&hfAB=&ddlStadium=&hfBB=&hfHL=&hfCount=&ddlYear=2014&ddlPlayer=pitcher&ddlMin=0&ddlPitcherHand=&ddlBatterHand=&ddlVGT=&ddlVLT=&ddlDistGT=&ddlDistLT=&txtAngleGT=&txtAngleLT=&txtGameDateGT=2014-10-28&txtGameDateLT=&ddlPlayerHeightGT=&ddlPlayerHeightLT=&ddlPlayerWeightGT=&ddlPlayerWeightLT=&ddlTeam=&ddlPosition=&hfRO=&ddlHomeRoad=&hfIN=&hfOT=&ddlGroupBy=name&ddlSort=desc&ddlMinABs=0&ddlSBSuccess=&txtPx1=&txtPx2=&txtPz1=&txtPz2=&ddlRPXGT_ft=&ddlRPXGT_in=&ddlRPXLT_ft=&ddlRPXLT_in=&ddlRPYGT_ft=&ddlRPYGT_in=&ddlRPYLT_ft=&ddlRPYLT_in=&txtBAGT=&txtBALT=&txtBLGT=&txtBLLT=&txtSRGT=&txtSRLT=&txtSDGT=&txtSDLT=&player_id=518516
Some perspective
1957 World Series: Lew Burdette
Game 2: CG, 2 runs, 7 hits
Game 5: CG, shutout
Game 7: CG, shutout ON TWO DAYS’ REST
Against the Yankees. The Yankees of Mantle, Skowron, Berra, Kubek, Slaughter – guys who could actually hit.
There’s this tendency to mythologize the past. With the exception of Mantle, this Royals bunch has some “guys who [can] actually hit”, and it ain’t just the fact that Skowron, Berra, Kubek & Slaughter are now all dead or ancient that would prevent them from showing better than the Royals. The speed of the game, it’s power, the task of starters, the big big big change in how bullpens are constructed and used, makes for a different game than they all played in. Mantle would’ve been awesome anytime between Doubeday and today, but the rest weren’t scaring anyone, not even Berra.
But sure, it’s right enough to raise other possibly comparable individual playoffs pitching feats. How about Mickey Lolich, for another example?
2014 Royals full season
.263/.314/.376/.690
wOBA .306
wRC+ 94
1957 Yankees full season (which included pitchers)
.268/.339/.409/.748
wOBA .331
wRC+ 107
Burdette faced tougher hitters than Bumgarner.
I would say part of the aggressiveness of the Royals was because of bad calls. When a pitcher is getting calls it causes batters to have to swing at pitches because of lack of faith the ump will call them correctly.
Nelson’s zone was more low than high, though. And there was no mistaking most of what Bumgarner was throwing for a pitch around the knees. I remember a curveball off the outside corner and a bit low that was called a strike, but in Nelson’s defense curveballs are really hard to get right around the corners, and Posey did some excellent framing throughout the postseason.
“Posey did some excellent framing throughout the postseason”
Indeed; yet another anti-Buster myth killed off.
Look at the pitch fx data.
Bumgarner had 8 balls outside the strike zone called strikes last night, and his strike zone was over two feet wide. I understand CNN glossing over this fact, but FanGraphs ought to be all over this.
I haven’t seen anybody question what effect this super-heavy workload is going to have on Bumgarner’s future. Lincecum and Cain were WS heroes the last two times…
Cheers,
Al Shank
Al’s Baseball Tidbits
You are posing a question that is impossible to answer. Every pitcher is different. We have enough data to support an asssertion that pitchers who pitch while fatigued have a greater risk of injury than pitchers who are rested. But that goes into the No Shit Sherlock database. As for predicting which individual pitcher will suffer and which will thrive, best of luck! You can join Tom Verducci’s club and be wrong almost all of the time.
Including the postseason, Bumgarner threw a total of 270 innings and a bit over 4,000 pitches. In 1989 Nolan Ryan threw almost the same number of pitches, and he was 42 years old!
Just to name a few, Ryan, Seaver, Carlton, Jim Palmer, Bob Gibson, and Bert Blyleven all had significantly higher workloads in numerous seasons than Bumgarner had this year. Did those heavier workloads affect their performance? All of them, with the exception of Ryan and Gibson, pitched a ton of innings by the age of 25. Ryan and Gibson more than made up for being late bloomers. If you want to use more recent pitchers because you think pitching has become more stressful, add Clemens, Maddux, and Glavine to the mix of pitchers who endured greater workloads in numerous years than Bumgarner has in just one season of his career.
In 2001, Randy Johnson threw 290 innings and over 4,600 pitches including the postseason. Johnson’s teammate Curt Schilling the same year threw over 300 innings over 4,300 pitches including the postseason. In 2002 Johnson and Schilling again finished 1-2 in the Cy Young Award; Schilling led all of baseball in xFIP, and only Pedro had a better FIP. And Johnson and Schilling routinely faced lineups in 2001 and 2002 far more dangerous than Bumgarner has ever faced.
Bumgarner is 25, 6’5″, 235 pounds, and has never thrown more than 124 pitches in a single game. He is an efficient pitcher. Greg Maddux, the master of efficiency, exceeded 124 pitches in a game 14 times before he turned 25, including a 167-pitch, 11-inning effort in 1988 when he was 22 years old. Pedro Martinez exceeded 124 pitches in a game at least 15 times before he turned 26. Were Maddux’s and Martinez’s futures affected by heavier workloads when they were young? If their futures were affected negatively by these heavy workloads, then I’ll take them.
I guess we’ll all have to wait until [cue eerie theramin music] the FUTURE…
Buster Posey’s most common and iconic phrase: “It’ll probably work out alright”.
Vintage Sullivan: “And that’s totally true, except for the part where it’s a complete and utter lie.”
Thanks for all of the great (and free for us) work you’ve put in this year, Jeff!
Serious question because I don’t know nearly enough about this: How was Bumgarner only 20th in WAR despite the great ERA/FIP/xFIP line and peripherals? I’m guessing the park factors and the fact that he pitches in the NL but he seems to be slightly better on the road and has dominated every opponent at one time or another.
But this is not the whole story. All October long he was getting guys out by throwing 6 inches high, or more. All this I can not properly explain, that talented players can not lay off those pitches.