This makes me sad. He never recovered from his shoulder injury.

If I were Bumgarner I would call up Jamie Moyer and/or Tommy John and/or Tom Glavine (and/or Frank Tanana) and see if they could show me how to get people out with slow stuff. He has the mechanics to do it, he just only really knows how to get people out with hard stuff.

Surprisingly he's only 33, and #7 in active innings pitched (and BBREF includes Hamels, who hasn't pitched since 2020). He's still been getting on the mound since he's been in Arizona but has clearly been ineffective.

A (small) sad day for baseball. Lots of memorable moments. It was obviously gonna be a struggle -- i.e. that he signed for as little as 5/$85 with his track record meant everybody knew the stuff wasn't there anymore. A couple of years ago, the Cards managed to get some useful innings out of Lester and Happ at the end of their careers, maybe they can do the same with Bumgarner.

If I were Bumgarner I would call up Jamie Moyer and/or Tommy John and/or Tom Glavine (and/or Frank Tanana) and see if they could show me how to get people out with slow stuff.

If I were Bumgarner, I'd be calling teams to see if they needed a DH.

This is one of those things where if a team like the Yankees or Cardinals pick him up, he'll give them 20 starts of 105 ERA+. If the Angels pick him up, he'll make three starts and put up a 105 ERA.

He did this to himself - it was never going to work out after the shoulder injury. A huge shame. If there were a HOF for World Series performances, he'd be at the top.

I'm always surprised these guys don't move into the bullpen. Bumgarner could probably still be somewhat effective at max effort for 1 inning at a time.

7...are you saying the shoulder injury was his fault?

As #2 points out, he seems to have a windup that would lend itself to becoming a junkballer. If I were him, I'd be calling Kershaw and asking him how he throws that uncle Charlie or Shohei to learn that sweeper or something. Time to learn to paint some corners and get Greinke or Rich Hill on the phone, surely those guys could give you some advice about variation, arm slots, grips, etc. etc. etc.

I doubt his career is over, I fully expect several teams to look at him as a potential 5th starter long man, if he's willing to spend time in AAA.

Do the Rangers need any possible rotation help? He could reunite with Bochy, who will surely fix what ails him.

9. Yes he did. He screwed it up in a dirt bike accident in 2017. His stats show a marked decline after that

Sad. I hope MadBum can get back on the mound. We might not see another like him; he was a throwback to earlier eras who pitched complete games in the postseason and helped themselves by hitting homers at the plate. He started 2 "win or go home" Wild Card games...both complete game shutouts. Threw another shutout in the 2014 WS, part of a 3 appearance, 21 IP performance (with a 0.43 ERA!). When are we going to see that again? 2014 feels like so long ago...

With the universal DH, I guess we're never going to see pitchers* cranking homers like Bumgarner anymore either. MadBum has 19 career dingers, the most for a pitcher* since...who? Bob Gibson?


* non-Ohtani division

MadBum has 19 career dingers, the most for a pitcher* since...who? Bob Gibson?

Carlos Zambrano, who had 24, the same career total as Gibson.

Good riddance - his red ass schtick has been tiresome for some time.

This makes me sad. He never recovered from his shoulder injury.

Or from being a horse's ass.

Leading to this Starkian question (or is it Kurkijan? never could keep those guys straight) ... Bob Forsch had 12 HRs; his brother Ken had 0. Is this the largest gap between pitching brothers? (I have no idea.)

Wes Ferrell had 38 as a P/PH; brother Rick, a C with over 7000 PA, had just 28. Wes also had a few apperaances in the OF but only 1 or 2 of his HR were hit as a PH-OF. I assume that's the only (non-trivial) case where the pitcher outhit the position-playing brother.

9. Yes he did. He screwed it up in a dirt bike accident in 2017. His stats show a marked decline after that

While I think it's fair to _speculate_ the injury was related to his long-term decline, this isn't true.

From 2010-2016, he had a 122 ERA+ with a 8.9/2.1 K/BB and a FIP slightly worse than his ERA. From 2014-16, he average 6.7 IP/start.

From 2017-2019, he had a 115 ERA+ with a 8.3/2.1 K/BB and a FIP even more slightly worse than his ERA. He averaged 6.2 IP/start and threw 208 IP in 2018. All of MLB had declined from 5.6 in 2016 to 5.2 in 2019.

That's at best a modest decline, it's quite possibly just standard random variation or age-related decline. Pitchers rarely come back effectively from serious shoulder injuries but he did not have surgery on the shoulder and did fine, both suggesting the shoulder injury wasn't that big of a deal, at least in the short term. He had a 128 ERA+ in the half-season following the accident. He broke a finger in spring 2018 and missed another half-season before posting a 116 ERA+. He did have the best season of his career in 2016 so of course everything looks like a decline in comparison with that.

Wes Ferrell had 38 as a P/PH; brother Rick, a C with over 7000 PA, had just 28. Wes also had a few apperaances in the OF but only 1 or 2 of his HR were hit as a PH-OF. I assume that's the only (non-trivial) case where the pitcher outhit the position-playing brother.

Pitcher Jim Tobin hit 17 HR in 885 PA; infielder Jackie Tobin hit 0 in 311 PA.

Bob Forsch had 12 HRs; his brother Ken had 0. Is this the largest gap between pitching brothers? (I have no idea.)

John, Walter, and Dad Clarkson were all pitchers who were brothers - John hit 24 HR, Dad 1, and Walter 0. John did also play 31 games as a position player when he wasn't pitching. I don't know if any of his home runs came in those games.

Would love to see him rejuvenate on the Dodgers alongside Kershaw. Maybe some of that WS magic can rub off onto Kershaw.

This makes me sad. He never recovered from his shoulder injury.

Or from being a horse's ass.

Preach! I'm still salty about the 2012 World Series. (I remember screaming at the screen, "You can't score runs off of Madison Bumgarner...?!")

Through age 27 in 2017, Bumgarner's best comp was Steve Carlton, and indeed their records are almost identical, with MadBum at 104-76, 123 ERA+ and Lefty (1965-72) at 104-72, 124 ERA+. One area that wasn't comparable was their salaries: MB was paid $33,510,000 his first seven years, while Carlton made all of...$212,000. (To put it another way, Bumgarner earned about twenty times what Carlton did...after you adjust for inflation!)

He hasn’t had the good results since he left SF, but it’s hard to blame it all on him losing his stuff, not being able to throw hard anymore.

Ok for this year, his fastball is down 2 MPH from last season, but his struggles go back to 2020.

In 2022 he averaged 91.2 on the fastball, 87.4 on the cutter.

Going back to his best season with the Giants, 2016, he was 91.4 on the fastball, 87.4 on the cutter. Almost no difference. But his strikeouts went down from 10.0/9 to 6.4, and his ERA+ from 146 to 83. What can you blame it on? Some guesses:

1. Not able to locate pitches within strike zone like he used to
2. His new ballpark is a lot less forgiving on fly balls
3. MLB has gone through a revolution in how pitchers throw and design their pitches. And batters have had to adjust to keep up. Maybe the world is changing around him, and the stuff that worked just fine in 2016 simply doesn’t work in 2022.
4. Other?
5. All of the above?

(I remember screaming at the screen, "You can't score runs off of Madison Bumgarner...?!")

Don't worry, neither could anyone else: career 0.25 ERA in 36 World Series innings.

1. Not able to locate pitches within strike zone like he used to

I don't remember who it was who said it, it might have been Eckersley, it might have been Carlton, but the crux of the comment was "the difference with aging wasn't that I couldn't throw hard, I could throw just as hard as I could before, but I couldn't locate nearly as well"

His home/road splits, at least in 2022 and 2023, aren't indicative of a home-park problem - his ERA is worse for away games.

and the stuff that worked just fine in 2016 simply doesn’t work in 2022

I think this is part of it. You watch the games and pitchers' stuff is nasty, and hitters keep hitting it. Bumgarner's stuff (fastball, slider) was never THAT nasty. Hitters may have just caught up.

Bumgarner’s struggles were not new to this season. He posted a 7.12 ERA over his final 10 starts of last year. His stuff often appeared noncompetitive; according to a source, players on a rival team talked about adjusting to the quality of his stuff in the same way that they would adjust to a position player pitching.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/mlb/diamondbacks/2023/04/20/moving-on-from-madison-bumgarner-price-arizona-diamondbacks-willing-to-pay/70136726007/

I 100% expect Bumgarner to end up on the Mets before his career is over and there’s probably a 50/50 shot it happens this year.

Scherzer told reporters after the game that he had washed his hands and changed gloves, knowing he would be checked again by umpires before pitching the fourth inning. He also said that he had rosin in his glove, but he insisted that there was no intent to cheat.

From the original ESPN article. If that rosin was in his glove the second time around (I think it was), it was misapplied per the memo.

19/24. I think you are both burying the lead. He recorded most of his WAR prior to 2016. Something like 22-24 plus lord knows how much post season WAR. Post accident he's recorded about 7-9 WAR. Clearly the injury impacted him. It's not age- his decline started in his age 27 season where you would have expected him to start racking up 5-6 WAR seasons. He was just coming into his own. Then boom, it's basically all over. He manages to hold on for a year or two with some ok seasons - basically three years of 2.5 pitching WAR, and then he's basically a replacement level pitcher for 4 years. Plus he was averaging 200 IP before the injury and is nowhere near that now.

The injury kept him from being the dominant pitcher he was about to become and now he's lost some speed and he's done.

From 2017-2019, he had a 115 ERA+ with a 8.3/2.1 K/BB and a FIP even more slightly worse than his ERA. He averaged 6.2 IP/start and threw 208 IP in 2018. All of MLB had declined from 5.6 in 2016 to 5.2 in 2019.

That's at best a modest decline, it's quite possibly just standard random variation or age-related decline. Pitchers rarely come back effectively from serious shoulder injuries but he did not have surgery on the shoulder and did fine, both suggesting the shoulder injury wasn't that big of a deal, at least in the short term. He had a 128 ERA+ in the half-season following the accident. He broke a finger in spring 2018 and missed another half-season before posting a 116 ERA+. He did have the best season of his career in 2016 so of course everything looks like a decline in comparison with that.

From 2010-2016, as Bumgarner never had an FIP worse than 3.66

In 2017, he had a 2.60 FIP pre-injury, and a 4.38 post injury.

He then never had an FIP better than 3.90 again.

There's a clear line running through his career, right at the time of the bike injury. Could other things have played a role as well? Sure. But the bike injury is still the line

From 2010-2016, as Bumgarner never had an FIP worse than 3.66

In 2017, he had a 2.60 FIP pre-injury, and a 4.38 post injury.

He then never had an FIP better than 3.90 again.

NL average FIP from 2010-16 was 3.89. NL average FIP from 2017-19 was 4.27. ERAs were very similar in both cases. That difference accounts for almost half of the increase in Bumgarner's FIP over the same periods (3.11 to 3.94), and over half the difference in his ERA (3.00 to 3.57).

His WAR totals obviously fell, because he missed time due to the injury (innings total from 2017-18 was down about 200 from what it was in 2015-16). But he was still an effective pitcher when on the mound through 2019; I'm skeptical that a 3-year-old injury accounts for his complete collapse starting in 2020.

Thank you for providing such an informative essay on this subject. This has truly made me think, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

gacha life

I just had a conversation with an Irene (a 60-ish checkout lady) today:

Me: I'd make a comment about seeing you in my dreams, but I guess you're pretty sick of that.
Irene (laughs): My folks named me after that song!

That tracks, as the most famous version of "Goodnight Irene" was a hit for the Weavers in 1955, and this lady was probably born circa late 50s.

the woman who lives one floor below me is named "Brandy."

I don't even need to see her ID to know how old she is, lol (there's very little doubt that she turns 51 sometime in 2023)

as for Madison Bumgarner, there are many great stories but my favorite is that only does it seem like half his rural town shares his last name, but at one point he briefly dated a girl named .... "Madison Bumgarner."

#35 was a dirty trick, Howie. My internal dialogue went "I knew a Brandy in college (and she wasn't a bad girl to know) so *of course* there are young Brandys. But that was college and I'm now..." Damn you, Howie :-)

ha !

not sure if this one is a "fine girl" or not - only met her once, and it was during COVID so we had masks on.
but it's a possibility.

P.S. Amazing what one can find on the innerwebs:

"Brandy made her debut on America’s Top 1000 list in 1967. By 1973, she was a Top 100 favorite. The name’s peak popularity was achieved in 1978 when she hit position #37 on the charts. Brandy held tight to the Top 100 rankings for 15 consecutive years (1973-1987)."

so there ARE youngish Brandys - they're just all over 35.

"Mandy" peaked in 1977 at #94 thanks to Barry Manilow - who covered a hit song in the UK that was titled "Brandy." but that couldn't work here, thanks to that 1972 hit.

Allison is one that is hard to track down. Nearest I can figure is 1966 Playmate of the year Allison Parks was part of the impetus for that name.

Ava is in part due to Ava Gardner but there were some other Avas later.

The rise in Harpers is directly based on the character in Wizards of Waverly Place. As is Madison to the Cybil Shepherd character.

Jason is traceable to that Jason and the Argonauts movie or whatever movie where Jason is the side kick.

Any guesses on Jeffrey?

Alexandra is another one thats hard to figure. It seems to have arose during WW II so I'm guessing its based on the city of Alexandria, Egypt.

Samantha: TV show Bewitched which debuted in 1964.

Actually both Alexis and ALexandra started their huge rise in the early 60s so Im wondering if there's a connection to Zorba the Greek (1964) and the Alexis character.

BITD, I dated a woman named Alison for over a year.

I found the single 'l' to be WAY hotter than the Allison version. but obviously I wasn't exactly objective on this matter, lol.

wait, Courtney-Thorne Smith was on Melrose Place playing a character named Alison right before I met 'mine'. so the stars aligned in that respect.

Courtney is another weird one, it started its mega rise in the early 60s when Tom Courtenay shows up in a lot of movies including Dr ZHivago which also started a minor trend in Lara babies.

The girl who played the Attack of the 50 foot woman was Allison Hayes but that movie was in the 1950s and didnt really spawn a trend. It would be interesting to figure out who she was named for.