It’s safe to say we’ll remember the 2014 World Series because of Madison Bumgarner.
He led the Giants to three of their four wins, starting twice before pitching five shutout innings in Game 7 to lock down San Francisco’s third title in five years. He even pitched the clincher it on two days’ rest. All told, he allowed one run in 21 World Series innings against a Kansas City Royals team that had been playing its best baseball of the season.
In fact, Bumgarner dominated throughout the entire post-season. He posted a 1.03 ERA during the month of October while setting an MLB record with 52.2 innings pitched — more than double the innings of the pitcher who ranked second this year, Yordano Ventura (25.1). There’s no longer any doubt that Bumgarner put together a historic post-season that rivals anything we’ve seen since Curt Schilling in the 2001 playoffs
Bumgarner — the obvious choice for World Series MVP — threw 68 pitches in Game 7. He joked Tuesday that he’d be ready to throw 200 if necessary, but he had pitched a complete game on Sunday, so he had minimal time to recover. Even so, manager Bruce Bochy left Bumgarner out there for the five-inning save as top relievers including Santiago Casilla and Sergio Romo remained in the bullpen.
Finally, after a season in which he threw 270 total innings, Bumgarner acknowledged to reporters that he feels a “little tired.”
But while we’ll remember the World Series itself for Bumgarner, Game 7 was merely the capper in a month of memorable games. Along the way we watched the Royals bunt and steal their way to a wild card game win, a marathon 18-inning NLDS game, an unlikely Matt Adams homer off of Clayton Kershaw, Mike Moustakas’ headlong dugout dive, redemptive walk-off home runs from Kolten Wong and Travis Ishikawa and incredible defensive plays from both the graceful Lorenzo Cain and the inelegant Hunter Pence.
The post-season isn’t this entertaining every year.
What makes Bumgarner’s Game 7 especially meaningful is that we’ve watched some one-sided series in the last decade: sweeps by the 2004 Red Sox, the 2005 White Sox, the 2007 Red Sox and the 2012 Giants plus 4-1 wins by the 2006 Cardinals, the 2008 Phillies and the 2010 Giants.
This year two Wild Card teams faced off for the chance to claim some history, and with a championship at stake, the teams didn’t disappoint.
The playoffs ended in the same way they began: with an entertaining must-win game at Kauffman Stadium. That in itself is remarkable considering that the Royals were a 90-loss team the last time the Giants won it all in 2012.
Watching Kansas City celebrate a championship at home after 29 years on the outside looking in would have been incredible, so the Royals had a lot of people rooting for them this October. It didn’t work out, but instead we got an equally compelling story thanks to Bumgarner’s run of dominance.
