Are We Overrating Madison Bumgarner?

How much do October heroics count for, really?

For the San Francisco Giants, what Madison Bumgarner did for them last autumn added up to a world title. It took a lot of moving pieces to get that third title in five years, but easily the most important part was Bumgarner doing things we’ve never seen, at least on that stage. In 52 2/3 postseason innings, Bumgarner allowed a mere six earned runs, and he carved his name into baseball history by throwing five nearly perfect innings to close out Game 7 on only two days’ rest, after having thrown a shutout in Game 5.

It was without question one of the most spectacular postseason performances we’ll ever witness. So how much is that worth? That’s the question today, because Bumgarner stands out as ranking surprisingly high (third) in the BBTN left-handed starting pitcher rankings, ahead of such names as David Price andJon Lester. He’s up two spots among lefty starters from a year ago, and judging by some of the names he’s ranked above, he’ll likely place much higher in the overall rankings as well (he was 40th in 2014).

To jump that far in a single year would indicate he’s coming off one of the most spectacular years in baseball. Based on only a few October weeks, maybe that’s true. But what about the far bigger sample size of multiple regular seasons, or that his regular season was a pretty good one that stood alongside pretty good ones from a lot of other pitchers? Were we so blown away by a few dozen great innings of pitching that we’ve looked past nearly a thousand innings across his career? Let’s investigate.

It’s not so much that we’re trying to say Bumgarner isn’t a star — he is, without question — but rather just to point out how many great starting pitchers there are in baseball right now. Not just Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, Chris Saleand Max Scherzer, but you also have Price, Lester, Corey Kluber, Cole Hamels,Johnny Cueto, Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Zack Greinke and many more.

Other than in the playoffs, Bumgarner’s overall performance hasn’t really stood out among this group. That’s the case whether you look at just last year, the past two years, or the past three years; Bumgarner has settled comfortably into the second or third tier of very good pitchers, as the table showing his MLB rankings reveals.

Even when you run the 2015 projections, he finishes around those rankings or slightly better (minimum 150 innings): ZiPS has him 13th in WAR, 10th in FIP and 18th in K/9. Steamer has him eighth in WAR, eighth in FIP and ninth in K/9.

That’s pretty good; no one’s suggesting otherwise. And those numbers don’t account for the playoffs, so certainly give him a little mental boost there for the additional value he provided the Giants, though that might be offset by concern over what kind of hangover could be weighing on his arm after throwing 270 combined innings in 2014.

Let’s look at it another way. Bumgarner and another pitcher who also ended his season in the Bay Area just put up campaigns that were nearly identical. The difference is in win-loss records, which should always be ignored, and especially in this case because the other pitcher spent the first half of his year playing on a dreadful last-place team.

Nearly indistinguishable, right? Those two pitchers amassed nearly an identical number of innings and were just about as valuable in them. Any pitcher who could perform as well as Bumgarner must be well-regarded, right?

Sort of. Pitcher 2 is Jeff Samardzija, who started the season with the Chicago Cubs and got traded to the Oakland Athletics. There’s a significant difference in their wins and losses, which as we know by now is mostly out of a starting pitcher’s control, but performance-wise, he had almost the exact same regular season as Bumgarner did. And yet Samardzija doesn’t even make it in the top 10 among right-handed pitchers, and thus will be significantly lower in the top 100 as well. His reputation obviously isn’t anywhere close to Bumgarner’s in terms of the pitchers they are right now.

So this must be all about that postseason performance, because even in the Cy Young Award balloting, which is conducted at the end of the regular season, eight pitchers across the two leagues received a larger share of the vote than Bumgarner did. In the span of a few weeks, Bumgarner raised his public profile so much that his perceived value exploded in the eyes of observers, even though pitchers on lesser teams weren’t afforded the same opportunity to shine in the playoffs. (It’s also worth noting that 21 of those innings — more than 40 percent — came against the speed-and-defense Royals, who were 18th in baseball in wRC+ and hit the fewest regular-season home runs by an AL team in a non-strike season since 1992.)

Here’s the deal: Bumgarner is a very good major league starting pitcher. He’s just not as all-around elite as we — and yes, I voted in those rankings as well — seem to think he is. We should realize that there’s no way Bumgarner (or any pitcher) can take what he did in those 52 2/3 innings and spread it across 200-plus regular-season innings. It’s not going to happen; if it did, it would merely be the best season in the history of baseball. What’s far more likely to happen is that Bumgarner is going to provide another really good year that still will be outdone by a dozen or so starters.

The Giants surely don’t care about this, nor should they. As the saying goes, flags fly forever, and Bumgarner has been a contributor to three championship teams. There might not be another pitcher in baseball they’d trade him for, but there are so many good starting pitchers around. There’s no shame in saying Bumgarner is merely a very good one, rather than one of the game’s truly elite.

After all, a few excellently timed weeks in October shouldn’t make us think he’s going to be better in 2015 than if he’d never gotten the opportunity to perform in the playoffs at all.