San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bumgarner unrewarded once again
LOS ANGELES — For more than two months the Giants waited for Madison Bumgarner to return the way kids count the weeks until Christmas. Their win-some, lose-some season would steady with the Big Fella back at the helm, they thought.
The Bumgarner scorecard since his return?
Three starts.
Two umpire scrapes.
No wins for him or the Giants.
Bumgarner had the best of the three starts Saturday night at Dodger Stadium and still felt the blunt end of a 3-1 loss as the Giants’ offense was silenced again.
“Right now we’re just getting shut down,” manager Bruce Bochy said in a refrain the fans
have heard often since mid-2016. “The boys are a little beat up, but we’ve got to find a way to get some runs.”
Dodger Stadium is not the place for it. The Giants have played 11 consecutive games here without scoring more than twice. Thus, the three that L.A. got against Bumgarner was too steep a hill to climb for a team that has gone scoreless in 31 of its past 36 innings overall.
The Giants had four hits, none from Brandon Belt in his return from an appendectomy. He went 0-for-4.
The Giants lost for the fifth time in six games since they beat Max Scherzer in Washington on Sunday. They ensured a losing record for their fourth straight trip, all to three cities.
It’s getting a little late for “bright spots.” The Giants need to win some ballgames because the Dodgers and Diamondbacks are both hot. Still, Bumgarner’s third start was a plus.
Bochy extended him to 112 pitches over six innings. He looked more like midseason Bumgarner, not rehabbing Bumgarner.
“His fastball jumped a little more tonight,” catcher Buster Posey said. “He’s only going to get stronger as he goes on.” Bumgarner was pleased with his pitch count and keeping the Giants close.
“That’s the only thing you can ask for,” he said. Then, asked how close he felt to midseason form, he said, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m trying to get there as fast as I can.”
Even Good Bumgarner surrenders homers now and again. That was the story Saturday, as Matt Kemp and Kiké Hernandez — the same Dodgers who homered to lead Friday night’s win — went deep.
Hernandez broke a 1-1 tie with his two-run homer on a curveball in the fifth inning. By the end of their careers, Hernandez might be remembered as the biggest Bumgarnerslayer of them all.
Hernandez raised his career average against Bumgarner to .455, which leads all hitters who have faced him at least 30 times. Hernandez has four homers against Bumgarner. The only hitter with more is Colorado’s Carlos Gonzalez.
Both players noted that much of Hernandez’s domination came in 2015, the first year they met. Since Hernandez’s two-homer, one-double game on April 15, 2016, he had gone 4-for-17 with seven strikeouts against Bumgarner before Saturday’s homer.
Bumgarner switched his attack against the super-utility man from fastballs to curveballs, and it worked until Bumgarner left one up. Hernandez certainly does not feel like he owns Bumgarner.
“I try not to think too much about it because I haven’t had much success against him the last two years,” he said. Bumgarner walked four and struck out three. He thought he had Kemp struck out to end the fifth inning — twice — first on a foul tip that Bumgarner and Posey wrongly thought the catcher held, then on the borderline pitch that umpire Dan Bellino called ball four.
Five nights after being ejected in Miami after Bochy pulled him, Bumgarner threw his hands up in frustration toward Bellino, but this time he held his tongue and his place in the game.
Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman