The Bumgarner of old returns — on mound and in L.A.’s face
Madison Bumgarner needed just two batters and eight pitches to go full MADbum.
When Max Muncy hit a no-doubt home run into McCovey Cove, the only run in Sunday’s 1-0 Dodgers victory, he admired the ball as he took four walking steps toward first before starting his trot, not particularly egregious in an evolving game.
It was egregious enough for Bumgarner. He starting walking toward Muncy and yelled, “Don’t watch the ball.”
Muncy hollered back, “If you don't want me to watch the ball, you can go in the ocean and get it.”
They jawed at one another until Muncy crossed the plate. There was no further trouble, unless you count the Giants trying for seven innings to hit Walker Buehler in the deciding game of a series the Dodgers won.
The Giants had to be satisfied with getting a win — despite scoring four runs in the three games — against Clayton Kershaw.
Bumgarner lost his fourth straight decision to the Dodgers dating to 2017, but that was not the upshot of his seven-inning, one-run domination of a team that has hit 100 home runs and leads the National League in most offensive categories.
Bumgarner might have made his final China Basin start against the Dodgers, who do not return until the season’s final weekend, long after the July 31 trade deadline.
Scouts are watching keenly and saw Bumgarner compete like the did in the championship years on what passes for the Giants’ biggest stage these days, a game against the Dodgers. When Bumgarner sees blue, his behind becomes red.
Nobody can say yet whether a contending team would pay a premium for Bumgarner’s Hall of Fame-caliber October experience and big-game intangibles when “intangible” has become a dirty word in this binary-driven era.
On Sunday, though, Bumgarner’s intangibles met his 2014 stuff.
With two outs in the seventh inning, Bumgarner stuck a 93 mph fastball under Cody Bellinger’s hands. The dangerous outfielder tried to yank it but swung and missed for strike three.
“He was hot, giving up the home run early, then nothing,” catcher Stephen Vogt said. “He’s a big-game pitcher. He’s a guy I want to take the ball every five days and Game 7. He’s a winner.”
The postgame conversation naturally centered not on the 21 outs that Bumgarner got but the one mistake he made, and more specifically, the result: Bumgarner chasing Muncy around the bases in full throat.
Attitudes on emotion, bat flips and the such are supposedly changing. Bumgarner acknowledged that and even made light of it.
“I can’t even say it with a straight face, but the more I think about it, they should let the kids play,” Bumgarner said. “That’s what everybody’s saying. But I can’t.
“He just struck a pose and walked further than I liked. If you want to do that, do it, but I’m going to do what I want to do. If they want to let everybody be themselves, let me be myself. That’s me. I’d just as soon fight than walk or whatever. “Just do your thing. I’ll do mine.”
The Giants lost because Buehler did his thing and the Giants’ batters did theirs, not a good combo for the home nine.
The Giants had one good shot at the right-hander, in the sixth, when singles by Mike Yastrzemski and Evan Longoria put runners on the corners with nobody out.
Pablo Sandoval smoked a ball to the left side at 98.6 mph, but Justin Turner deftly gloved it and the Dodgers retired Yastrzemski in a rundown. Vogt and Kevin Pillar flied out and, in the words of Vin Scully, “That’s all she wrote.”