Digging into Madison Bumgarner’s Game 4 Gem

Madison Bumgarner was on last night and when a pitcher is on it is a beautiful thing to watch.

For all the talk about how young Bumgarner is and how he is a rookie, last night he was simply a great pitcher on the mound getting outs against a very tough lineup.

He had the icy stare of a vet and the fearlessness of a man who was born to pitch in these situations and the numbers look just as good as he did last night.

Pitch Statistics
Pitch Type	Avg Speed	Max Speed	Avg H-Break	Avg V-Break	Count	Strikes / %	Linear Weights
FF (FourSeam Fastball)	90.91	94.4	6.01	9.17	44	30 / 68.18%	-1.4700
CH (Changeup)	83.61	85.2	9.09	5.53	21	16 / 76.19%	-1.6735
SL (Slider)	84.63	87	-1.25	4.11	25	18 / 72.00%	-1.1357
CU (Curveball)	75.60	76.9	-6.14	-3.35	5	1 / 20.00%	0.0144
FT (TwoSeam Fastball)	89.55	92.3	8.87	8.37	11	4 / 36.36%	-0.0186
Information from brooksbaseball.net/.

Of all the things that can be said the most impressive was the way that he attacked the Texas hitters and mixed up his speed and location to keep the ball off the barrel of the bat and keep the Rangers hitters off balance.

Bumgarner has thrown the best game of this World Series, doing better then Cy Young winners Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum, better than All-Star Matt Cain, and better then C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis and Jonathan Sanchez who have had praise heaped upon them this week.

His line was excellent, 8 innings, 3 hits, 2 walks, 6 strike outs, 0 runs, only 1 runner reaching second base.
Even that first walk was a questionable one when you look at the pitch locations. It certainly looked like he might have been squeezed in that first inning.

There is a great piece by from fangraph's Jack Moore putting how good Bumgarner was into historical perspective that is well worth the read.

Here is a snippet:

"The games started by Tommy Hunter and Madison Bumgarner represent the 1,231 and 1,232 pitching starts in World Series history. Only 137 of them have seen a pitcher throw at least eight innings and allow zero earned runs. The number drops to 27 when we restrict ourselves to the modern era (1969-present) and only 13 in the Wild Card era (1993-present). Bumgarner's game score of 80 ranks tied for 84th all-time. Only 19 pitchers have bested that game score since 1969, and only seven (Roger Clemens, Cliff Lee, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Chris Carpenter, Josh Beckett, and Randy Johnson) have done it since 1993."

A tip of the hat to Mad Bum who has put the Giants in the drivers seat the rest of the way winning a pivotal game and doing so in an impressive fashion.