The next round of October baseball is underway Thursday afternoon with the Texas Rangers hosting the Toronto Blue Jays (the Boston Red Sox are in Cleveland to play the Indians Thursday), but for some people that’s not enough. Instead of enjoying the baseball, some folks are sweating the ballplayers. Take Buster Olney, for instance—he wants to know what Madison Bumgarner wants his legacy as a pitcher to be.
“Oh man, why you asking me all these hard questions?” said the 27-year-old southpaw after his complete game 3-0 win over the Mets last night. “I don’t know, man,” Bumgarner drawled concisely, “a winner?”
Well, he’s got that wrapped up. His Wednesday night effort was his third career postseason shutout, leaving him one behind Giants legend Christy Mathewson. Bumgarner has pitched 23 consecutive scoreless innings since he last gave up a run with Salvador Perez’s home run in the 2014 World Series. In his last nine postseason appearances, Bumgarner has pitched 68.2 innings for a 6-1 record, a save in game 7 of the 2014 World Series, with an ERA of 0.79. Clayton Kershaw may be the game’s top lefthander, and even Giants’ teammate Johnny Cueto has a better shot at winning this year’s N.L. Cy Young Award, but there’s no one this side of the Woodrow Wilson administration you’d rather have in the posteason than MadBum. Man, a winner.
It’s a little hard to tell to what extent Bumgarner is just funning fans with his big old country boy playing country hardball routine. Yes, he’s from a part of North Carolina nicknamed Bumtown because of all the folks there named Bumgarner. But sometimes it feels like the lefthander is just improvising an elaborate tribute to old-time ball players like Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang. Bumgarner is no dummy. “To be a successful pitcher in the Big Leagues,” as Mathewson himself, a Bucknell grad, wrote in 1916, “a man must have the head and the arm.”
The scouting report on Bumgarner can’t have changed much since he first came to the big leagues for good in 2010. That year he made his first postseason appearance—take a 2-strike approach early in the count and make contact, don’t try to pull him since he has too much command of the outside part of the plate and his curveball, try to steal runs with hit-and-runs since he’s always around the plate, make him field his position and do anything to break up his tempo—but it doesn’t seem to matter. As soon as the leaves start to turn and the 162-game schedule is over, Bumgarner can’t be beat.
The shame of course is that Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard pitched a beautiful ballgame, too, Wednesday night. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, pitched seven frames of shutout baseball, and struck out ten. The man known as Thor threw 42 pitches 98 mph or higher, which is more than the entire pitching staffs of the Phillies and Indians threw all year. “Baseball has a way of ripping your ♥ out,” Syndergaard tweeted after the game, “stabbing it, putting it back in your chest, then healing itself just in time for Spring Training.” It’s ok to cry in baseball, Mets fans. Your club had a good year, especially given all the injuries to what was in April arguably the premier starting rotation in the big leagues.
The Queens faithful should stop dumping on closer Jeurys Familia, who gave up the game-winning three-run blast to Conor Gillaspie. “I’m not going to let this haunt me,” Familia said. “It’s a part of the job. Sometimes you get the job done. Sometimes you don’t. It’s just too bad it had to happen in the last game of the season.”
Familia finished the year with 51 saves, and if his strikeout/walks ratio was a little less impressive this year than it was last year when he earned 43 saves, his home run per nine innings was an astonishing 0.1. The odds were against a hitter in the 8-hole taking him deep. But that’s baseball.
As some have noted, the Mets lost going with their closer while the Orioles lost the American League Wild Card game with theirs in the pen. Why, O’s fans will be asking until at least April, didn’t Buck Showalter call on Zach Britton, the best closer in baseball, to pitch the eleventh inning? Instead the O’s skipper went for Ubaldo Jimenez, who gave up the walk-off homer to Edwin Encarnacion. Presumably, Showalter didn’t want to use Britton with the score tied, and wanted instead to keep him in reserve to save the game should the Orioles take the lead. (Here’s an excellent piece from ESPN explaining why that doesn’t make good baseball sense.) It’s hardly surprising that baseball pundits like Showalter’s former ESPN colleague Tim Kurkjian don’t know why Buck kept Britton in the bullpen—because it seems Buck doesn’t either.
Less than three months ago, Showalter was explaining why he summoned Britton from the bullpen—on the road in Toronto—to go two innings when the score was tied. “Regardless of the score and what conventionality tells you,” said Showalter, “I’m putting my best pitcher on the field. I’m not going to save him around for a close [situation] that may not happen.”
So, Buck, what happened Tuesday night? Baseball.
