Giants play it safe with Bumgarner
SAN FRANCISCO >> With a two-hit shutout Friday, Chris Stratton became the first Giants pitcher and just the third National League West starter to record a complete game this season.
For the first six innings of the Giants’ 3-0 victory over the Rockies on Saturday, Madison Bumgarner was on pace to follow Stratton’s lead and blank a visiting Colorado squad.
But in a season marred by injuries, Bumgarner was the latest to require attention from the Giants’ medical staff. After Bumgarner threw his first two pitches in the sixth inning, the left-hander received a visit from manager Bruce Bochy and trainer Dave Groeschner as he felt tightness in his right side. The starter talked his way into remaining in the game, but he did not return for the top of the seventh despite needing just 64 pitches to complete six scoreless innings.
“It feels fine, it’s probably as minor as it could be,” Bumgarner said. “But they wanted to be cautious about it and I don’t blame them for that. I’m on board with the situation we’re in.”
After losing several core players to injury this season including veteran starters Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija, the Giants are unwilling to take chances and risk further harm to their 2019 squad.
“After the sixth, we just thought the smart thing to do was to get him out of there so this thing can’t get worse,” Bochy said. “We expect him to make the next start. We were just being cautious with him.”
Bumgarner said he initially felt the tightness during an early at-bat, but he could have remained on the mound in a mustwin situation. Despite wanting to throw a complete game before the season ends, Bumgarner said he’ll happily set aside personal goals when doing so is in the team’s best interest.
“Individual stuff don’t interest me, winning games interests me,” Bumgarner said. “Being able to be out there interests me. That’s what the number one thing is for me.”
The shutout win marked the Giants’ 15th of the season and their third against the Rockies, all of which have come at AT&T Park. Colorado had been held scoreless just seven times this season before the weekend, but was kept off the board in back-toback games for the first time since September 2021, 2017.
“It’s hard to lose when your pitcher throws a complete game shutout and to follow that up the next day with six innings and no runs then the bullpen picked it up from there,” first baseman Austin Slater said.
The victory was Bumgarner’s first since an Aug. 23 win in New York over the Mets, which was also the last time closer Will Smith picked up a save before he finished off the Rockies in the ninth inning Saturday.
After allowing a combined 11 earned runs in his last two starts, Bumgarner looked like an ace against a high-powered Rockies offense that entered Saturday’s game with the third-most runs in the National League. Though he scattered five hits in six innings, the Giants ace induced a pair of double plays to erase a pair of Rockies’ scoring chances.
For the second straight game, the Giants opened up a two-run lead in the second inning as they
started the frame with back-to-back hits from Brandon Crawford and Nick Hundley.
Slater brought home the first run of the game with an RBI groundout before left fielder Hunter Pence blooped a single in shallow center field to double the lead.
“Especially with the skid we were in, for us to get after it early and take the lead early was a huge momentum swing,” Slater said.
The Giants added on in the third inning after Bumgarner led off with a double over center fielder Charlie Blackmon’s head. The starting pitcher came around to score on a wild pitch in the same inning when Rockies righthander German Márquez drilled third baseman Evan Longoria in the back with a changeup.
The plunking resulted in an emphatic warning to both sides from home plate umpire Ramon DeJesus, who took a proactive approach to reducing tensions after Bumgarner hit Colorado second baseman D.J. LeMahieu in the top of the inning.
Though Slater was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the sixth, DeJesus opted not to eject Márquez as he determined the breaking ball that clanked off the first baseman’s helmet was not an intentional act.
• Slater remained in the game after the hit by pitch and said he passed a postgame test evaluating him for concussion symptoms. The Giants regular first baseman, Brandon Belt, had an MRI on Saturday on a sore right knee that’s bothered him for most of the second half.
Bochy said the MRI did not reveal further damage, but Belt will be monitored closely over the final two weeks of the season.