Without MadBum, orange and black fans feel blue. He’s gone. So are the SF Giants we loved.
Those of use who follow the San Francisco Giants have a palpable sense of mourning and rage this holiday season. That came to a head on Sunday when news broke that Madison Bumgarner, the left-handed pitcher who was historically excellent during the Giants championship runs between 2010 and 2014, was leaving via free agency to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Posts on social media fumed with indignation casting a pall over the normally bouncy radio programming at KNBR, home of the Giants. My buddy Brian Murphy, co-host of the KNBR morning show, has been particularly and uncharacteristically aggrieved.
When Murphy tweeted a black and white image of a stoic Bumgarner, tipping his cap one last time to Giants fans at the season ender of 2019, more than 800 people liked it and piled onto the Giant fan scrum of discontent.
“I’m just sad. This sucks,” tweeted one of Murph’s legion of followers. “We can’t pay 17M per year for (Bumgarner’s) 200 innings. Maybe this is the incentive I need to downgrade my cable and save some $.”
And it went on and on from there.
People aren’t just mad, they are ready to boycott. To stop watching. To abandon the orange and black and the horse it rode in on.
This about denial among people who can’t fully accept that the Giants championship window closed when their core players faded too soon. But it goes deeper than that.
Analytics rule
Letting Bumgarner walk makes perfect sense from a baseball analytics standpoint considering how his numbers and velocity have declined in the last three seasons. But I would argue that Madbum’s departure symbolizes the end of an era.
Bumgarner leaving even though the Giants could have afforded his five-year, $85-million price tag with Arizona is the clearest signal yet that we’re done with a Giants culture built on names and identities: Wille Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Will Clark, Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Bumgarner.
That’s over now. Farhan Zaidi, the Giants president of baseball operations, is all about analytics, utility, flexibility and fealty to the idea of having numerous options, with the sum total of the whole is far more important than the name or identity of any single player. He’s let go of old-hand coaches and scouts and hired youthful replacements lacking traditional baseball experience. The Giants faithful is responding with a crisis of faith manifested in anger.
The problem here is that this industry standard common in baseball had one glaring exception: The San Francisco Giants.
They won three championships in the 2010s while also lionizing personalities. Where else do you see fans wearing Panda hats to celebrate the nickname of chubby every man Pablo Sandoval? Brandon Belt was “The Baby Giraffe.” Lincecum, “The Freak.” Even far lesser names such as Kevin Pillar, who played less than a full season in 2019, was embraced by fans who are now angry that the Giants let him walk before they let Bumgarner walk.
If the Giants brass could still communicate effectively, it might have been able to bridge this divide between the new direction and fans yearning for yesterday. But the Giants have never effectively been able to admit that they needed to rebuild the baseball operation.
They just can’t seem to face that truth.
So they are letting Zaidi do a rebuild without really explaining the vision very well. But let’s be honest: This fan base can’t yet face the truth either.
The fans seem to believe that locking up a fading Bumgarner to a long-term contract would have been a good investment in the future when it most certainly would not. You don’t build for the future by investing in the past. You don’t create a new culture by extending the symbol of the old culture.
And there is one key piece of information we don’t know: Did Bumgarner want to move on? Maybe he did and that was his right.
Bumgarner’s fading numbers
What we do know is that Bumgarner’s numbers deteriorated in the last three seasons. He wasn’t in the top 10 of any worthwhile pitching category last season except innings pitched and even then, he was ninth in that. But in the categories you don’t want to lead, Bumgarner was right there: Fifth in most hits allowed by National League pitchers. Fourth in most earned runs allowed by National League pitchers.
In wins above replacement, or WAR, a metric that measures a player’s overall value to his team, Bumgarner was 31st among NL pitchers. He hasn’t been an ace or an All-Star since 2016. He gave up a career high 30 home runs last season.
Why would you invest in five more years of that unless you are solely driven by nostalgia? And why would you want to be solely driven by nostalgia?
The Giants have been so bad for three seasons that the time for nostalgia is up. The window is closed. But what a glorious window it was.
Giants World Series glow
I feel blessed to have been on hand when they recorded the final outs in the 2010 and 2012 World Series. My greatest baseball memory was being on hand when Travis Ishikawa hit a walk-off home run to clinch the National League pennant for the Giants in 2014.
I experienced pure joy when a journeyman player had his greatest moment and a fan base celebrated with him. My memories are full: Lincecum’s masterpiece against the Atlanta Braves in the 2010 divisional series and his epic turn in the 2010 World Series. Steve Perry lip-syncing “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” in the galleries. “Pence at the Fence.” Belt’s momentous extra-inning home in the 2014 divisional playoffs against Washington. Marco Scutaro catching the last out of the 2012 NLCS in the rain.
I can still hear my brother’s voice cracking with emotion after the Giants won the first title in 2010, as we remembered our dad who had passed away in 2008.
It’s all over now and there really is one only one positive option: Celebrate the past while embracing the future.
Will Zaidi’s plan work? I have no idea. But I know what hasn’t been working: Holding onto 2010, 2012 and 2014 when they ain’t coming back.
