Giants disrespected Bumgarner with contract offers
Madison Bumgarner leaving the Giants for the Arizona Diamondbacks didn’t surprise one of his former teammates, who said the star pitcher’s exit from San Francisco might have beenmore than three years in the making.
Michael Morse, who played with the Giants in 2014 and again in 2017 and is a close friend of Bumgarner’s, said on radio station KNBR on Wednesday the left-hander received what amounted to an insulting contract extension offer from the club after his infamous dirt-bike accident in 2017.
“The biggest thing that I think is when they did offer him an extension, it was very, very short of what he was thinking, to the point that it might’ve been even a slap- in- the- face kind of thing,” Morse told KNBR of an offer extended after Bumgarner’s accident and with two years left on his existing deal. “Madison is the kind of guy, if you mess with Madison one time, that’s it, it’s over. I think after that he kind of saw the direction the team was going and he said, ‘ I’m going to put my head down and work and bust my butt, and I see now that my time here might be done.’”
Bumgarner, who was introduced in a press conference in Arizona on Tuesday after signing a five-year, $85 million dollar deal, did receive a final offer from the Giants before agreeing to leave town. The Giants offered Bumgarner a fouryear contract worth a little more than $70 million, according to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic.
In the end, the Giants’ latest offer may have marked the third time Bumgarner felt he was being short- changed by the team. After the failed 2017 negotiations, the Giants were set to engage Bumgarner again before the 2018 season. But, Bumgarner was hurt again — breaking his pitching hand on a line drive off the bat of Kansas City’s Whit Merrifield — and the Giants never made an offer.
The Giants shook up their front office last year, bringing in former A’s and Dodgers executive Farhan Zaidi to run baseball operations, and re- signing the three- time World Series champion never seemed like an organizational priority.
“It’s pretty obvious that there really wasn’t communication between him and San Francisco and re- signing, and I think it could go back to the dirt bike accident, because after that there was a lot of talk of, ‘Oh, his velocity is not there anymore and he’s not the pitcher he was,’” Morse said. “You’re talking about a guy that rehabbed harder than any guy I’ve ever seen to get back and better than he was before, and it just so happens the team wasn’t as good.
“I know him, I know Ali, his wife, and they love, love, love San Francisco. If it was in the cards, he would’ve definitely signed back. The whole thing about Arizona was his No. 1 choice, that tells me San Francisco was out.”