Going Mad Over Bumgarner |

With yet another brilliant start in a 4-1 win in Tampa Bay on Friday night, Giants’ starter Madison Bumgarner made a little bit of franchise history. The lanky lefty is currently on a nine-start streak of pitching at least seven innings while allowing two earned runs or less. That stands as the second-longest in franchise history, behind Ferdie Schupp of the then New York Giants, who had 12 such starts between the 1916 and 1917 seasons. This impressive streak has not only produced the lowest ERA of Bumgarner’s young career (2.69), but it’s also planted the 24-year-old firmly in the middle of the Cy Young race.

The Giants’ de facto ace is showing no signs of slowing down either, especially after tying his season-high in strikeouts with 11 against a baffled Rays lineup. He was clinical with the slider, throwing the pitch a season-high 53 times with an impressive 35 of those tosses going for strikes. That’s been par for the course for Bumgarner this season because no pitcher in baseball favors his slider as much as the Giants’ lefty.

According to the pitch data over at Fangraphs, Bumgarner has thrown his slider a whopping 38.8% of the time and with good reason, because it’s also the 3rd fastest pitch of its type in all of baseball. Only Homer Bailey and NL All-Star starter Matt Harvey spin their sliders faster than the 87.4 mph averaged by Bumgarner. The pitch has left hitters absolutely dumbfounded as well. Opponents are hitting just .198 against Bumgarner’s frisbee-like slider in 217 plate appearances and they’ve managed a measly 12 extra-base hits.

That slider isn’t Bumgarner’s only weapon either. His fastball has actually been better than his slider this year, with opponents managing to hit just .180 against the pitch. In fact, Bumgarner turned to his fastball more often than his slider with 2 strikes against the Rays and the results were excellent, as he struck out 5 Tampa hitters on the pitch. He’s also been able to improve his change-up and curveball to the point that they are now solid secondary offerings to complement his 2 plus pitches, the fastball and curveball, which only serves to further confuse hitters.

But maybe the biggest reason for Bumgarner’s success is that his approach to hitters works equally well no matter which side of the plate they hit from. Now, since he’s left-handed, it’s fairly understandable why left-handed hitters struggle against Bumgarner. Every single one of his pitches breaks away from a lefty hitter and because of a rather deceptive delivery and an odd arm angle it must be hell to hit against him. What’s rather surprising is Bumgarner’s success against righties. Check out his splits:

Against righties: .200/.271/.299, 7 homers, 91 K, 34 BB

Against lefties: .158/.198/.317, 5 homers, 44 K, 5 BB

The slider is a big key here as well. Bumgarner is content to frisbee the pitch on the inside corner where it can creep in under the hands of right-handed hitters, burying them in the process. Just take a look at his pitch breakdown against the righties from his start against the Rays:

All of those little red dots you see are sliders and, for the most part, Bumgarner and catcher Buster Posey stick to their plan with the pitch. They make a conscious effort to stay away from the outer corner and the lower middle of the plate where hitters can do the most damage. Instead, Posey sets up on the inside corner where the natural movement of Bumgarner’s pitches can force hitters into feeble swings.

As long as he continues to pitch off of his slider, Madison Bumgarner should continue to dominate hitters and his impressive streak should continue.

Big thanks to Fangraphs, Brooks Baseball, and Baseball-Reference for the statistical help!

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Richard Chester

11 years ago

Surprisingly Carl Hubbell’s longest streak of 7+ IP and fewer then 2 ER was only 6 games.

David Horwich

It will be interesting to see whether Bumgarner can sustain his success through the end of the season. Last year he had a 2.83 ERA through his first 171 2/3 IP (25 starts), which is not far off the 2.69 ERA he’s posted in 147 IP (22 starts) this year. But on August 20 last year he threw a season-high 123 pitches (one off his career high) and did not pitch particularly well afterwards – he posted a 5.89 ERA in his last 36 2/3 IP (7 starts) of the regular season, and was ineffective in his first 2 postseason… Read more »

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David Hruska

Reply to David Horwich

good point. Bumgarner looked like he had a tired arm for most of the 2012 playoffs too, or at least until he unleashed 7 dominant innings against Detroit on 11 days rest. Also, thanks for the notes, the corrections have been made.

That late skid disguised what a good year he’d had up to that point. In fact, Bumgarner’s average-looking seasonal ERAs obscure how good he is the majority of the time. His 2011 ERA would have been 2.86 without his 8 run, 1 out disaster start. His 2012 ERA, as you said, was 2.83 until he tired, adding half a run to his yearly total. This year, if we removed his worst outing, his ERA would be 2.41.

Also as you alluded to, his World Series record does stand out. Two starts, 15 IP, 5 Hits, 0 Runs.

Lawrence Azrin

Freddie Schupp was once considered the (post-1901) single-season ERA leader, not Dutch Leonard – from a SABR interview with Daniel R. Levitt: “… Around 1995 I came across an entry in an old sports encyclopedia that credited Ferdie Schupp with the single season ERA record of 0.90 in 1916, more recently usually credited to Dutch Leonard for his 0.96 ERA in 1914. After further research it was clear that Schupp was the acknowledged leader at the time and for many years thereafter. Based on the tenet that we don’t retroactively re-award titles because of changes in the qualifications for league… Read more »

e pluribus munu

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

A very interesting catch, Lawrence. I could never figure out the Schupp record. He was indeed usually listed as the NL ERA champ for 1916 when I started looking at records, but my understanding was that to qualify at the time a pitcher needed 10 complete games and at least 100 IP – Schupp had well over 100 IP, but fewer than 10 CGs. So I wasn’t surprised when his season was not listed as a championship one by Macmillan 1969. Looking at Levitt’s article, however, I see he claims that the 10 CG standard wasn’t established till 1917. (It’s… Read more »

bstar

Reply to e pluribus munu

Cool stuff. Schupp’s ERA and ERA+ are (obviously) not listed on B-Ref’s leaderboard page for single-season records, otherwise I may have heard of the guy before! If they were, Schupp’s 1916 ERA+ of 272 would nestle into fourth all-time, right below Dutch Leonard’s 282 ERA+ in 1914 and right above Greg Maddux’s two best seasons, 1994 (271) and 1995 (260). Sitting atop the list is Tim Keefe’s 1880 record of a 293 ERA+, so post-1901 Schupp’s 1916 season would be third all-time if he indeed did have a qualifying season. Pedro Martinez holds the single-season post-1901 record with his 291… Read more »

Editor

John Autin

That Ferdie Schupp was recognized as the ERA leader and thus record-holder is (apparently) a historical fact, and no, we don’t retrospectively re-award titles because of changes in the qualifying standards.

At the same time, I’m very glad that B-R applies the modern standard to the “qualified for the ERA title” filter in the Play Index. When I do a search, I don’t want the results cluttered by Tiny Bonham and other pre-War pitchers who had 10 complete games, but just 100 innings.

And if I’m talking about “the best qualifying ERA ever,” I’m using the modern standard.