Giants ace Madison Bumgarner has tossed a quality start in each of his first three appearances in 2017. Unfortunately, everything else hasn’t exactly been quality for San Francisco in those games, with all three resulting in a losing effort.
The most recent of which came in Bumgarner’s start on Thursday evening against the Rockies, where he gave up three runs in six innings, but had little help from the offense that mustered just one run on five hits. Despite the 0-2 record, Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow believes that Bumgarner has pitched extremely well, going so far as to say that it’s the best he’s ever looked to start a season.
“I think he’s been in a mechanical groove to start the season and I don’t think we’ve ever seen him this good at the start of a season,” Krukow told Murph and Mac on Friday morning. “It tells you a lot about baseball. He can go out there and he can guarantee that he is going to pitch well — the way that he’s pitching right now. His curveball, his command of both sides of the plate, he can guarantee that he’s going to pitch well, but you cannot guarantee that you’re going to win.”
In three starts, Bumgarner has a 3.43 ERA, 1.00 WHIP and has struck out 24 batters in 21 innings. He has received a total of seven runs of support in those outings.
“It’s the nature of the game. So many intangibles have to happen that support your effort, and the first thing is you have to have runs scored for you. I like that about the National League that the pitchers can hit — at least you have something to say about what your fate is that night, but they’ve scored two runs for him in his last two games total. That’s just not great support. When that happens, it magnifies what everybody perceives to be a mistake.”
Bumgarner’s biggest mistake on Thursday came in the top of the fourth inning.
“He has a man on and he has Trevor Story the shortstop up. He’s got good power so you want to challenge and get ahead. So he challenges the fastball — boom — home run. There’s your mistake, and it looms large when your team doesn’t score any runs, so that’s the game basically. Frustrating night for him, but I hope he doesn’t change a thing he’s doing.”
Listen to the full interview below.