If Madison Bumgarner Is Done, Is He A Hall Of Fame Pitcher?

The only thing less surprising than Madison Bumgarner being designated for assignment by the Diamondbacks on Apr. 20 was Bumgarner clearing waivers and officially receiving his release last Wednesday.

With Bumgarner due roughly $37 million through next season via the remainder of his ill-advised five-year deal with the Diamondbacks, no one was going to claim him. After all, pitchers due roughly $37 million for the next 20 months aren’t released unless they’re performing particularly poorly, and with his strikeout rate dropping along with his velocity, Bumgarner — who was 15-32 with a 5.23 ERA since the start of 2020 and 0-3 with a 10.26 ERA this season — might actually be in worse condition than the numbers suggest.

Still, pitching’s harder to find than ever, and Bumgarner is somehow just 33 years old. It’s easy enough to envision a contender — maybe the Mets, who are down two Cy Young Award winners at the moment, or perhaps the Rangers, who are managed by Bumgarner’s former skipper with the Giants, Bruce Bochy, and just lost Jacob deGrom to another elbow injury — taking a flier on Bumgarner and hoping he can find something resembling his form after some tinkering.

But that leads to two intertwined questions.

First, does Bumgarner even want to continue pitching? The native of a small town in North Carolina is famously iconoclastic — as far as we know, he’s the only player in baseball history who has his team roping pseudonym linked on his Baseball Reference page — and will have made more than $150 million by the end of 2024. If he so desires, that’s plenty of money to retire to the ranch and cattle company Bumgarner and his wife own and to stoke his competitive juices in rodeos.

Secondly, and perhaps even more intriguingly: If Bumgarner is done pitching, is he a Hall of Famer?

Such a question about a pitcher with a 134-124 record, a 3.47 ERA and 2,070 strikeouts compiled over 13-plus years of service time wouldn’t have even been pondered a generation ago. Frank Tanana, who went 240-236 with a 3.66 ERA and 2,773 strikeouts in a career that lasted 20-plus seasons, didn’t receive a single vote in his lone year on the ballot in 1999.

Of course, everyone knows the standards for pitchers have changed since Tanana threw his final pitch 30 years ago. Bumgarner ranks among the top 12 active pitchers in innings pitched (seventh), strikeouts (eighth), wins (ninth), WHIP (12th) and WAR (12th) as well as 16th in ERA. By any standard, he’s been one of the better regular season pitchers of his generation.

And by any standard, he’s been not just the best postseason pitchers of his generation but one of the best postseason pitchers ever. Bumgarner is 8-3 with a 2.11 ERA, an 0.90 WHIP, three shutouts and one save in 16 playoff games (14 starts). The ERA and WHIP are each the third-lowest in history among pitchers who have thrown at least 100 postseason innings and second-lowest among starters behind only Christy Mathewson, who pitched his last playoff game in 1913. (First, of course, is Mariano Rivera)

Bumgarner’s exploits helped the Giants win three championships during their every-other-year dynasty from 2010 through 2014. The latter title was an almost singular feat produced by Bumgarner, who threw a shutout in a wild card win over the Pirates, won the NLCS MVP by posting a 1.72 ERA in two starts against the Cardinals and won the World Series MVP by going 2-0 with a 0.43 ERA, one shutout and a five-inning save in Game 7 against the Royals. The rest of the Giants pitching staff produced a 3.77 in the playoffs.

As FanGraphs noted the day after Bumgarner was designated for assignment, there’s a good chance Bumgarner’s postseason dominance shortened his peak as an ace-caliber pitcher. Bumgarner was 100-67 with a 2.99 ERA through the end of the 2016 season but is just 34-57 with a 4.31 ERA since.

FanGraphs also posited Bumgarner’s fade in his late 30s and early 30s all but ensures he’ll be the last pitcher to ever take on such a heavy postseason workload — which is going to make for a fascinating debate whenever Bumgarner debuts on the ballot.

Bumgarner did not and will not have the length of a routine Hall of Famer, but he’s done things on the biggest stage that no one alive had ever seen before and no one anywhere will ever see again. Is the emphasis on the “fame” part enough to make up for everything else? The five-year waiting period for candidates can only help Bumgarner’s case as his feats grow more and more remarkable in retrospect. But even Bumgarner may not know if the time to debate has already begun.