Madison Bumgarner made history on Tuesday night. Just not in the good way.
The Giants pitcher (somehow) managed to allow eight consecutive hits before getting yanked after just one-third of an inning pitched and the Twins having posted a crooked number -- eight! -- that would make an NFL team proud.
"It was pretty pathetic," Bumgarner said following the game.
And his manager agreed as well -- Bochy acknowledged just how difficult it was for Bumgarner to get hit as hard as he did.
"That's a first for me to see it quite go like that," Giants manager Bochy said. "That's hard to do. Madison's been throwing the ball so well, and even though he's off it's still hard to do.
"I don't care if you're throwing batting practice out there. We just couldn't stop it."
The irony of this, of course, is that Bumgarner had been dealing for quite some time -- the shellacking brings to end a 10-game streak of quality starts for "MadBum."
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The loss on Tuesday is also theoretically more reflective of Bumgarner's record (if pitcher wins and losses mattered, that is) as he's now 3-9, despite that truly impressive run through May and June.
Things were so terrible last night that, as Jayson Stark noted last night, Bumgarner became the first pitcher in the live-ball era to give up nine hits in a game without actually getting two outs. Or, if you prefer a more quantifiable statistic, he posted a -15.83 in my fantasy points league, easily the lowest total I've seen from a pitcher in my 10-plus years of playing.
That nasty performance will lead folks to freaking out that Bumgarner's continuing his "terrible season," but the truth of the matter is that the Twins were just hitting the ball where the Giants weren't.
Bumgarner allowed 100 percent of his batted balls in play to run through the defense, which is a pretty terrifying statistic, and, small sample size issues aside, proof that he can easily bounce back later in the week when he gets a shot at reminding folks he's had a pretty good season so far.
