If Giants, Bumgarner win wild card, they’ll be hard to stop.
Wild card win-or-you’re out start, like in 2014, goes to Bumgarner
SAN FRANCISCO — The N.L. wild card game is the ultimate small sample size. Madison Bumgarner bulled through one for the Giants in 2014. Johnny Cueto crumbled in one for the Reds in 2013.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said he would have felt confident sending either of his two front-line starting pitchers to the mound against Noah Syndergaard and the New York Mets on Wednesday at Citi Field.
“That’s how much I think of both of them,” Bochy said.
All diplomacy aside, though, there was only one choice. Just as they did two years ago in Pittsburgh, the Giants will hand the ball to Bumgarner, watch him ascend a foreign mound and rely on him to save their season.
“All we wanted was a chance,” Bochy said. “We had to fight to get it, and we did. It’s our guy against their guy.”
Cueto has thrown the ball
better down the stretch, going 4-0 with a 1.78 ERA in five starts since Sept. 1. He made a successful comeback after a strained groin forced him to miss one turn. He’d be a formidable presence Friday at Wrigley Field in Game 1 of an N.L. Division series against the Chicago Cubs, if the Giants can get past the Mets.
Bumgarner is 2-1 with a 3.92 ERA in six starts since Sept. 1, he has thrown a career-high 2262⁄3 innings, and said “the tank’s getting low” when he took himself out after seven shutout innings in a Sept. 19 game the Giants let slip away at Dodger Stadium.
Where is the tank at now?
“Well, yeah, every day’s different,” Bumgarner said. “But for this time of year, or any time, I feel as good as I did in April. That’s why we put in all the work and get in the kind of shape we’ve got to be in to stay strong and finish.
“You plan on playing into October and November, so you’ve got to make sure you put the work in so you can do that.”
Bumgarner’s staying power is the stuff of legend; his 522⁄3 innings in the 2014 postseason, spread over six starts, plus a five-inning relief appearance in Game 7 of the World Series, ranks as the heaviest postseason workload in baseball history.
That ironman run began with a shutout in the wild card game at Pittsburgh. And now, considering the Giants’ bullpen has blown 30 saves this season, Bumgarner might be counted upon to go the distance again.
The key for Bumgarner against the Mets is clear: Keep the ball in the park.
He faces a Mets offense that scored the fourth fewest runs in the National League, yet hit the second most home runs, trailing only the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s not surprising, then, that the Mets scored an astounding 51.1 percent of their runs via the long ball — far and away the highest among N.L. teams, and well above the league average of 38.8 percent.
The Mets aren’t popping up the Big Apple in garbage time, either. Of their 218 home runs, 77 have put them ahead, 17 tied the score and four won games in walk-off fashion.
The Giants actually outscored the Mets 715-671 this season, but did a lot more hustling to cross the plate; the Giants scored just 28.5 percent of their runs via the homer, the second-lowest percentage in the N.L.
Bumgarner, who allowed a career-high 26 home runs this season, said that aside from executing pitches, there is no special strategy to neutralizing an all-or-mostly-nothing lineup anchored by Yoenis Cespedes and Curtis Granderson.
“Man, I know this sounds stupid, but it’s like any other game,” Bumgarner said. “You can’t try to read into it and change what you’ve been doing. You’ve just got to go out and compete and give the team a chance to win.”
Bumgarner and Syndergaard opposed each other earlier this season at Citi Field on May 1, with the Giants winning 6-1. Bumgarner threw six shutout innings; Hunter Pence hit a two-run home run and the Giants chased the Mets’ imposing right-hander in the sixth.
Here are two perfectly reasonable sentences that sound comical when placed back to back: Syndergaard didn’t have his best stuff that day. His average fastball velocity was 96.6 mph. He threw only seven of 98 pitches over 98 mph.
When he faced the Giants again at AT&T Park on Aug. 21, he threw 44 of his 98 pitches at 98 mph or faster. He allowed two hits over eight shutout innings to outduel Jeff Samardzija in the Mets’ 2-0 victory.
The right-hander with the flowing blond hair owns the hardest average fastball of any starter in the major leagues. He threw 1,047 pitches at 98 mph. That was more than any major league team except the Yankees, and represented 10.3 percent of all pitches thrown that hard this season.
His slider averaged better than 91 mph this season — harder than the fourseam fastball of over 86 big league pitchers, according to MLB StatCast.
Bumgarner complimented Syndergaard’s stuff, and when asked to elaborate, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Well, it’s his 100-mph fastball he can command really good, and his 94-mph slider,” Bumgarner said. “You don’t see that every day. But I’ve got all the confidence in the world behind my guys there. I’m excited and ready to go.”