The catchers knew first.
I really like Madison Bumgarner. What he lacks in stuff, he makes up for in control and deception. It’s amazing how fast a 92 miles per hour fastball appears to a batter when the release of the pitch is hidden from until the very last moment of a pitcher’s delivery, never mind a high 80s slider.
He uses something of a foolproof approach to pitching: Throw your harder stuff low in the zone, get ahead in the count or induce a ground ball. If you’re ahead in the count, use your breaking or off-speed pitches to make a batter either swing and miss or make really bad contact.
I was a bit worried that this wasn’t the approach that Madison Bumgarner would be able to undertake in Game Two of the World Series. This approach is dependent on having not only excellent control, but also successful command. He had neither in Game Two of the NLDS or Game One of the NLCS. He had it tonight.
After a first inning in which he benefitted from an umpire and batters figuring out the strike zone, he settled in to a positively dominant performance. Bumgarner threw seven innings of shutout baseball, allowing only two hits and two walks while striking out eight batters.
Detroit’s Doug Fister was almost his equal, but his pitch count caught up to him in the seventh inning when he gave up a single to Hunter Pence, and was removed from the game. From there, Drew Smyly proceeded to walk Brandon Belt and give up a single to Gregor Blanco to load the bases. Brandon Crawford hit into a double play to score the first run of the game and give the Giants a 1-0 lead over the Tigers.
San Francisco added to their lead in the eighth inning when Pence hit a sacrifice fly to score Angel Pagan, and make the score 2-0, which is the exact same lead that the team holds in the World Series, after Santiago Casilla shut down the Tigers in the eighth, and Sergio Romo did the same in the ninth.
