Madison Bumgarner has never thrown a big-league pitch on a team other than the San Francisco Giants. He will this year as he switched teams to the NL West-rival Arizona Diamondbacks. Here are two props available to wager at Mybookie on Bumgarner’s and the Giants’ 2020 MLB season – assuming there is one – and an overview.
Madison Bumgarner MLB Awards Odds & Analysis For 2020 Season
- NL Cy Young Award: Bumgarner is +4000
- Odds to win NL West: Giants are +5000 long shots
is one of the great postseason pitchers in MLB history. The Giants won three World Series during his time there, and he was unbelievable in the 2014 playoffs. That year, he started the Wild Card game for the Giants, throwing a shutout against the Pirates. He was the MVP of the NLCS and then set World Series record for the lowest ERA and won the Most Valuable Player award. Bumgarner allowed only one run in 21 innings in his three games pitched in the series, including two starts; he won both starts and earned the save in Game 7.
just became the sixth man to pitch at least five innings in three different World Series games while allowing no more than one earned run per contest. The others: Christy Mathewson, Sandy Koufax, Waite Hoyt, George Earnshaw and Stan Coveleski. Four of those cases came in 1930 or earlier, with Koufax doing it in 1965.
missed chunks of the 2017 & ’18 season with the Giants due to injury. On March 28, 2019, Bumgarner joined Juan Marichal as the only pitchers to make at least five Opening Day starts for the San Francisco era Giants. Bumgarner would eventually pass Carl Hubbell for the most strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher in Giants history.
He finished his 11th and final season in a Giants uniform by going 9-9 with a 3.90 ERA (90er, 207.2ip) in 34 starts. That matched the most starts of his career (also 34 in 2016) and logged 207.2 innings, the second-most in the NL behind Washington’s Stephen Strasburg (209.0). Bumgarner was one of just 15 pitchers to log 200-or-more innings in 2019, and it was the seventh time in his 11 seasons to pass the 200-inning plateau.
The Giants won nine-straight Bumgarner home starts from June 15-August 30, the longest single-season streak by a Giant since Shawn Estes in 1997 (12 straight). The southpaw reached the 200-K plateau for the fourth time in his career. The tied him for the second-most 200-K seasons in SF history (Tim Lincecum & Gaylord Perry also had four 200-K seasons). Marichal had six.
While Bumgarner surrendered a career-high 30 home runs (tied for the third-most in the NL), he had the lowest ground ball rate of his career at 36% (his career rate is 43%).
And opposing teams can’t pitch around Bumgarner. His 19 career home runs are four more than any other pitcher in Giants franchise history (most HRs by pitcher in Giants franchise history: Bumgarner (19), Hal Schumacher (15), Johnny Antonelli (15), Clint Hartung (14), Freddie Fitzimmons (13). Every other Giants pitcher with 10+ HR debuted before 1955. Bumgarner’s 19 HRs are the most of any active pitcher.
This offseason, the Giants didn’t make a huge push to sign Bumgarner so he took five years and $85 million from Arizona. The deal includes $15 million in deferred money making the front end of the contract even more friendly for the D’backs. The contract is the second-largest in total value in club history, only topped by the $206.5 million which was handed to Zack Greinke.
If there’s one worry for Arizona, Bumgarner had a 5.29 ERA away from San Francisco last year. Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo had announced Bumgarner as the team’s Opening Day starter, and presumably that will be the case whenever the season starts. This spring, Bumgarner was just OK before the shutdown, allowing six runs (five earned) with a 10/2 K/BB ratio across 8 1/3 innings.
