Wouldn’t you know it, Cueto’s teammate is the one to knock him out of the top five. Madison Bumgarner was already having a great season, pairing with Cueto and Jeff Samardzjia to form one of the most dominant trios in MLB. After putting up back-to-back seasons with sub-3.00 ERAs, ‘MadBum’ as the fans call him has decided to go supersonic this year.
Thursday night he threw another 7.2 scoreless innings, allowing just four hits while striking out eleven. That dominance pushed him to top five rankings in WAR, strikeouts, innings pitched and ERA and cemented his place on this list. He even made sure he got the win by blasting his second home run of the season and thirteenth of his career off Braves rookie Aaron Blair in the fifth inning.
The southpaw already has three World Series rings, a World Series MVP and two Silver Slugger awards, and after placing in the top-10 of Cy Young voting the last three seasons, he’s looking to climb to the very top of that mountain as well.
San Francisco is 34-22 on the season and if there is anything to the even-season magic (the Giants have won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014 in recent history), Bumgarner will get another chance to show he’s one of the biggest clutch performers in the game right now. The fact that he has some competition in the Giants rotation just seems to have motivated him further.
Next: Thunder and Lightning