SAN FRANCISCO -- After Game 6 of the 2014 World Series, Madison Bumgarner found a big crowd waiting for him in the visiting locker room at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Reporters wanted to know if he would pitch the next night, and how much he could pitch, but Bumgarner was mostly just excited that his close friend Tim Hudson would be the man to start the final game of the season.
He thought it was meant to be for Hudson to have that moment, but he also knew it was all hands on deck in Game 7, and he was ready for it. Bumgarner ended up throwing five shutout innings out of the bullpen, capping a historic month and dragging the Giants through the finish line of their third World Series title.
Most of that team will gather at Oracle Park on Saturday to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of that run, and on Friday night, Bumgarner recalled how he made it clear to manager Bruce Bochy that he felt strong enough to give him whatever he needed, whether that meant pitching in Game 6 or starting one of the final two games even though he had thrown a 117-pitch shutout in Game 5.
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"I just let him know that I could. I let him know that I could and it wasn't trying to be a tough guy or whatever," Bumgarner told NBC Sports Bay Area. "I would have done that, too. For whatever reason, at that time of my career I was locked in as good as I could be and the body felt good and I was able to recover. When everything is flowing and going right and (there) are a lot of more stress-free innings and stuff, that helps a guy be able to bounce back and recover. I felt great the whole postseason."
Bumgarner ended up throwing 52 2/3 innings with a 1.03 ERA during the 2014 MLB playoffs. He faced 195 batters over seven appearances that month, the final one being Royals catcher Salvador Perez. With the tying run on third, Bumgarner and catcher Buster Posey repeatedly climbed the ladder with the fastball to try and use the young catcher's aggression against him.
Bumgarner said he was fine with walking Perez if he was going to take those pitches, but on his 68th pitch of the night, Perez popped up to third. The Giants had their third title in five years and Bumgarner had a World Series MVP trophy, as well.
As he looks back on that postseason, he remembers everything "working perfectly." That feeling started in the second half, but it carried over to October, when Bumgarner threw a shutout in the Wild Card Game to get the title run started.
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"People talk about the zone, that was it," he said. "I didn't have it before then and I didn't have it after then. That was the spot for me."
In the decade since, no pitcher has gotten within 15 innings of duplicating Bumgarner's performance during the 2014 postseason. The game is changing quickly, and durability has become a lost art, but a decade ago, Bumgarner mixed it with dominance, leading the way for a tired staff that needed every one of those innings.
The month put Bumgarner in the record books and cemented his legacy as one of the best big-game performers of all-time. It's a stretch of dominance the Giants will celebrate on Saturday, and it's unlikely to ever be matched.
"Who knows what's going to happen. I could never say never," he said. "Who knows what the game is going to evolve into, but I would say it's a pretty safe bet that it's not going to happen in the near future the way it's going."
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