KANSAS CITY, Mo. — By the time Madison Bumgarner finished his second inning of relief work in Game 7 of the World Series, his legend had been already cemented at Ruthian levels.
And we’re talking about Babe Ruth as a pitcher, not as the portly slugger who changed the game of baseball with his power at the plate. As a pitcher, had a 0.87 ERA in three career World Series starts. By the time Bumgarner closed out the World Series — the Giants' third title in five years — with his fifth jaw-dropping inning of scoreless baseball, his name was best said with a hushed, reverent tone.
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“He’s the Brahma bull,” left-hander Javier Lopez told Sporting News during the Giants’ postgame clubhouse celebration. “He came in and did what he had to do. He knew he was going to pitch today. He answered the call.
“He wanted to be the guy, and he was the guy. He’s the one (who) is going to put a ring on everybody’s finger tonight, and everybody’s excited about it.”
Bumgarner had a career World Series ERA of 0.29 heading into Game 7, and his five scoreless innings in San Francisco's 3-2 victory lowered that mark to 0.25 (true, that might not look like a huge statistical jump, but it’s hard to improve on near-perfection).
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This brilliance, in Game 7 of the World Series when working on just two days' rest.
You remember, of course, that he threw a complete-game shutout in Game 5. That should have mattered in the clincher, but it didn’t. After his 117-pitch effort in San Francisco on Sunday, he threw 68 pitches in relief on Wednesday.
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That’s tell-your-kids stuff. Truly amazing. In his 21 innings against the Royals, Bumgarner gave up just nine hits, one run and one walk while striking out 17. He was named the MVP of the series, in one of the easiest calls of all time.
In Game 7, Bumgarner gave up a hit to the first batter he faced, Omar Infante, to lead off the fifth, and the only real threat came after Alcides Escobar sacrificed Infante into scoring position. But Nori Aoki lined out — that could have been an RBI hit, but the Giants had him played perfectly down the left-field line — and then he struck out Lorenzo Cain, who has been Kansas City’s best hitter this month.
From there, he rolled up the innings with a level of efficiency that must have been brutally difficult for the Royals fans at Kauffman Stadium to watch. Three outs on 12 pitches in the sixth. Three more on nine more in the seventh. Three outs on 16 pitches in the eighth.
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At that point, he’d already gone four stunning innings, and the game belonged to him.
“I knew he felt good,” said Giants veteran right-hander Matt Cain, who has been off the active roster after midseason elbow surgery but still is a big part of the clubhouse. “You could see he felt good, you could see he had that confidence in what he was going to do. That’s what you need in those big situations when you’re running off adrenaline. His stuff kept working. Him and (Giants catcher) Buster (Posey) were just worried about getting guys out.”
After Infante, no other Royal reached first base off Bumgarner until Alex Gordon reached third on a single and a two-base error with two outs in the ninth. But even that bit of momentary insanity couldn’t derail Bumgarner.
Throwing all fastballs, he got ahead of Salvador Perez 1-2, and finally got him to pop out to end the game.
The performance was brilliant. It was historic. It was Bumgarnerian.
