PHOENIX, Arizona–Entering Saturday evening’s matchup between the Giants and Diamondbacks at Chase Field, San Francisco’s offense had scored two runs or fewer in six of ace Madison Bumgarner’s 12 starts this season.
Though he’s three years removed from the greatest individual performance in postseason history, and a little over four months removed from spraining his left shoulder, Bumgarner is still one of the best pitchers in baseball. The problem for San Francisco? As much as his efforts on the mound attempt to jade them, the Giants have to remember that Bumgarner is still mortal.
On Saturday, the Giants scored just one run behind Bumgarner, and though he allowed just five hits over 7.0 innings of work, the San Francisco left-hander came out on the wrong end of a 2-1 ballgame.
While Bumgarner is entirely capable of throwing nine shutout innings on any given night, those types of performances haven’t materialized this season. Instead of being a Cy Young-caliber hurler, when Bumgarner’s been on the mound, for the most part, he’s been very good. And with the Giants’ lineup, very good hasn’t been enough.
For the seventh time this season, the Giants scored two runs or fewer on a night when Bumgarner has started, and for the seventh time this year, the Giants lost when that happened.
“You give up two runs in seven innings in this ballpark, I think that’s a nice job,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said.
Bumgarner’s Saturday outing marked the fourth time in the month of August alone in which he’s allowed two runs or fewer in a start, and the Giants are now 1-3 in those games. His last time out, a late-inning blowup by Hunter Strickland cost San Francisco a shot to clinch a series victory over Philadelphia. In that start, Bumgarner went six innings, and gave up just one run. On August 4, Bumgarner faced the Diamondbacks up in San Francisco, and on that night, he threw seven innings of two-run ball. Yet just as he did on Saturday, Bumgarner took the loss, as the Giants mustered just a single run on his behalf.
Perhaps the most flagrant abuse of a Bumgarner outing came on July 30, when the 28-year-old threw seven shutout innings against a Los Angeles Dodgers team that’s on pace to break the Major League record for wins in a single season. It took until extra innings, but eventually, the Dodgers broke out against the Giants’ bullpen, won 3-2, and spoiled Bumgarner’s most spectacular start of the year.
In many of his starts, though, including the one he made against Arizona on Saturday evening, Bumgarner’s worst mistakes have played a decisive role in the game’s outcomes. Twice on Saturday, Bumgarner left pitches out over the heart of the plate, and twice, Diamondbacks’ hitters launched those mistakes into the bleachers.
“That’s the game today,” Bochy said. “You look at, during BP, you look at the home runs that are being hit. It’s incredible in today’s game. I said that, it looks like over 50 guys are going to have 30 or more home runs. It’s just part of the game. Guys are getting the ball in the air more and in this ballpark, two solo home runs, that’s a great job. That’s what you’re dealing with now. You don’t give up as many hits but you’re giving up more home runs.”
In the bottom of the first inning, center fielder A.J. Pollock clobbered a Bumgarner offering to the left of the 413-foot sign in the left-center field power alley, and that home run gave Arizona a 1-0 lead. In the fourth inning, J.D. Martinez smashed a Bumgarner cutter way over the left field wall to break a 1-1 tie. It was a devastating blow for Bumgarner, who has now given up two home runs in four separate starts since the All-Star break, and a crushing hit for a Giants’ team that never managed to get going against Diamondbacks’ starter Taijuan Walker.
“The 3-2 pitch to Martinez, I obviously don’t want to walk him,” Bumgarner said. “The spot, it was probably more middle, but 3-2, that’s where I was just going with more selection over location and thought it would beat him and didn’t. The pitch to Pollock, I guess he’s gotten really good at hitting high fastballs over the last year or two. Because that’s two of them that he’s hit off of me this year in basically the same spot. That’s pretty good. There’s not too many guys who hit those pitches like that.”
Outside of left fielder Jarrett Parker, who obliterated a walker fastball for a 441-foot tape measure home run in the top of the fourth inning, and later tripled in the top of the sixth, no Giants’ player recorded a hit that mattered off of the fifth-year veteran. Walker began the game by retiring the first 11 hitters he faced, and exited with a 2-1 lead in the top of the seventh.
The Giants had their chances to give Bumgarner more support, and Bumgarner even had a grand opportunity to help himself out, but ultimately, San Francisco’s offense couldn’t bail out a starter who made just two mistakes.
In the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, the Giants even had runners in scoring positioned, primed to tie the game, or even take the lead. But in all three of those frames, a key strikeout ended the team’s threat. In two of those innings, it was Bumgarner who struck out with a runner in scoring position, but it’s impossible to pin the loss all on his shoulders. At some point, San Francisco can’t leave it up to one player to lead the team past an entire ballclub. The Giants have to save that for October. And they’ll have to save October for another season.