Chris Mezzavilla
For Madison Bumgarner, it’s the start of a learning process. After all, there’s only one team he could not face the last 10 years.
The Giants batters enjoyed not being in the box against their star lefty for that decade. And even for the new ones, well, this feels a bit off.
Bumgarner was back on the Oracle Park mound for the first time since Sept. 24 of last year, and the first time ever without a Giants uniform on. He has struggled through first ineffectiveness and then injury in his first season in Arizona, but looked more like himself Saturday in the 4-3 Giants win.
He was pleased with that, saying he “found a lot of positive stuff about” the four-inning, two-run outing, in which his fastball began to tick up again. But he also wanted to know what the Giants looked like.
Of the Giants he knows well — Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Pablo Sandoval, holdovers from the 2014 World Series Bumgarner carried them to — he “hadn’t faced pretty much any of them I think.”
He had seen Evan Longoria a bit, but not a whole lot before he couldn’t decide which cutter to throw him.
“I made more than one mistake, but there’s one that cost me, to Longoria,” Bumgarner said about the second-inning home run. “I threw it about where I wanted to. I was debating whether to throw that cutter up and in or down and in. Obviously now looking back, should’ve went with the down-and-in option.”
Next up was Darin Ruf, who had been 2-for-9 with a double against Bumgarner in another lifetime, while he was with Philadelphia before he played in South Korea. Bumgarner called the memories of those at-bats “pretty vague,” and was feeling around for what Ruf could and couldn’t handle.
He threw a cutter down and away. Ruf could handle it.
“I’m always trying to suck in all the information I can. With Ruf, I didn’t know that much about him,” said Bumgarner, who gave kudos to the 34-year-old for blasting it 453 feet away to dead center. “…Scouting reports are great, but every day is different, they’re just a guide. So if you can take in and learn from each time out there, it does nothing but help you.”
He is now the Giants’ NL West rival, and he will see the club repeatedly and begin to write another book on how to get them out, not how to lead them to titles.
For Belt, who grounded out and walked against Bumgarner, and the rest of the longer-term Giants, they will begin to learn him in another role. For Joey Bart, who caught Bumgarner in spring training last year, he will be facing, not catching, an icon.
“It was weird. It was a little uncomfortable,” said Bart, who struck out and grounded out. “That guy has obviously done what he’s done for so long, and he’s obviously really effective. It would’ve been really interesting to face him when he threw crazy hard. It would’ve been even more uncomfortable. But it was pretty cool, I have a lot of respect for him, and I wish the best for him.”
What went unsaid is: Except against the Giants, who will see him quite a bit.