San Francisco Giants: The New and Improved Madison Bumgarner

It has been something of a fall from grace for San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner. This year, however, he is looking different and teams should take notice.

San Francisco Giants starter Madison Bumgarner is best known for his postseason accolades including 2014 World Series MVP where he dominated the Royals.  Outside of the playoffs, however, Bumgarner was a well above average starting pitcher, tallying over 200 innings and posting 2.6 or more fWAR from 2011 to 2016.

Then in 2017, that streak ended with Bumgarner pitching only 111 innings because of the infamous dirt-bike incident.  2018 didn’t go his way either after taking a come backer that fractured his left hand.  Still, in both of those campaigns, he pitched to a respectable, but not great 3.0 WAR over those two seasons.

With Farhan Zaidi now running the front office, the Giants fielded offers for their ace but didn’t find value they deemed acceptable.  This year marks the end of the 5-year, $35M contract he signed with the Giants, where he will test free agency for the first time at the age of 30.

The San Francisco Giants are unlikely to be in the playoff mix so, Bumgarner will likely be available pending his health.  Teams should be taking notice of him as a target through two starts in 2019.  Simply put, Bumgarner’s spin rates on his fastball and slider are through the roof, and that makes him interesting.

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Let’s start with what Bumgarner has been.  Statcast only has spin rate data for pitchers from 2017 to the present day, so we are working with multiple years of data, but one that misses when he was an elite pitcher.

In 2017/18, Bumgarner had an average fastball spin rate of 2141 RPMs, which ranked him well below league average.  Over the same period, his breaking balls had an average spin rate of 2327, also below average.

Never a flame thrower, Bumgarner’s average fastball velocity has hovered in the 91 MPH range throughout his career.  When Bumgarner was elite, he succeeded with his fastball-slider combo by posting strong K numbers and inducing tons of ground balls and weak contact.

The diminished most recent version of Bumgarner saw him lose strikeouts but still do an acceptable job of managing contact.  He may, however, be going through a renaissance of his own.

This brings us to 2019, Bumgarner still has the same velocity on his fastball as he did the past two years (90.9).  Same for his slider (85.5).  While he is unlikely to regain his old velocity that made him elite, the 2019 version of Madison Bumgarner could be an effective and interesting pitcher to a contender.

For the first time ever, Bumgarner is registering above average spin rate on his fastball and is also showing improved spin on his breaking ball.  In fact, if you look at all pitchers spin rates in 2018 and compare them to 2019, Bumgarner has added the most fastball spin of all pitchers with an increase of 309 RPMs (if you are curious, Brewer Corbin Burnes is #2).  If you run the same exercise for breaking balls, he ranks third this time with an increase of 275 RPMs.

In addition to throwing different pitches in 2019, Bumgarner is locating differently than he has in the past.  Observe his pitching heat maps in 2018 for his fastball and breaking balls.  You see a pitcher who was attacking hitters in the zone and living in the middle of the plate.  Not the most advisable path for a guy throwing 91.

Now compare that to this year’s fastball / breaking ball mix.  He is now attacking right-handed hitters inside with both his fastball and his breaking ball.  With his fastball though, you can see that he is moving it all around the strike zone possibly finding what locations work best for him.

The down and in pocket where most of the pitches are concentrated probably isn’t the best for his new found spin pitches (those pitches should be elevated), but it will be interesting to follow throughout the season.  The results haven’t been there so far Bumgarner, but teams these days are more interested in the underlying abilities rather than top line results.

So what does all of this mean?  Driveline Baseball has studied spin rate in depth and found that high spin pitches miss more bats and are optimally placed up in the zone.  They also found that higher spin “cannot necessarily” be created, but Bumgarner and others may have found a way in the years since that study was published.

I am not sure how San Francisco Giants starter Madison Bumgarner has turned himself into a high spin pitcher but teams have placed a high value on these types of pitchers.  Teams should start paying attention, Bumgarner’s pitches have changed and that could again make him a dangerous weapon for a team that is postseason bound.