What Toll Will Madison Bumgarner's Heroic MVP Performance Have on His Future?

Debate all you want where it ranks in Major League Baseball lore, but it's virtually impossible to put together a better postseason performance than the one Madison Bumgarner just polished off, hurling five scoreless innings of relief to close out the Kansas City Royals in the San Francisco Giants' 3-2 victory in Game 7 of the World Series Wednesday night.

The big left-hander did that, by the way, merely three days after chucking 117 pitches in his Game 5 complete-game shutout Sunday.

"Pitch count wasn't on my mind, [number of] innings wasn't on my mind," Bumgarner said on the field immediately after completing the first-ever five-inning save in MLB postseason history and celebrating the Game 7 win—and third title in five seasons—with his teammates.

All in all, Bumgarner finished October by going 4-1 with a save in seven games (six starts) with a 1.03 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and 45-to-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 52.2 innings, setting or approaching all kinds of playoff records.

Of those, the most impressive—and also the most concerning for the Giants—is that inning total, which surpassed the previous mark of 48.1 thrown by Curt Schilling for the Arizona Diamondbacks on their way to the title in 2001.

In fact, none other than Schilling himself declared Bumgarner's postseason as the best ever:

Again, that may be up for debate, but it's an understatement to say that Bumgarner earned his MVP awards for both the National League Championship Series and the Fall Classic.

The Giants pushed their ace to the limit, and it paid off in the best possible way in 2014.

But what might that mean for Bumgarner in 2015?

Well, let's start by looking at it this way: Bumgarner essentially threw another quarter of a season's worth of innings in the span of exactly four weeks.

His first outing of the playoffs came in his four-hit shutout of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL Wild Card Game on Wednesday, Oct. 1, and his final pitch was thrown on Wednesday, Oct. 29, in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series.

"You know what, I can't lie to you anymore—I'm a little tired now," Bumgarner offered sheepishly when asked how he felt afterward.

He should be. All told, the southpaw made it through an incredible 270.0 innings between the regular season (career-high 217.1) and postseason (52.2).

That has to be the most frames a pitcher has accrued in a single season in years, right? Wrong.

Just last year, St. Louis Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright racked up 241.2 innings from April through September and then 35.0 more in October for a total of 276.2.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

As far as what the Giants and Bumgarner might expect going forward, then, that's your comparison right there.

The Cardinals right-hander was nails across all of 2013 while helping his team reach the World Series. This year, he followed up with arguably his best season ever at age 32, setting career-bests in both ERA (2.38) and WHIP (1.03). So far, so good.

Thing is, Wainwright's performance dropped off noticeably and across the board from the first half to the second, which happened after he battled an elbow problem that cost him a start midseason:

	GS	IP	ERA	WHIP	K/9	BB/9
FIRST HALF	19	138.0	1.83	0.91	7.5	1.8
SECOND HALF	13	89.0	3.24	1.21	6.5	2.3

While a strong September (5-0, 1.38 ERA) helped quell suspicions that he might be injured, Wainwright clearly wasn't himself in the playoffs, during which he surrendered 10 earned runs on 21 hits in 16.0 innings across three starts. That led to all sorts of speculation about his elbow.

Turns out, Wainwright wound up undergoing minor surgery to trim a piece of cartilage in his right elbow a week after the Cardinals were eliminated. He's expected to be ready for the start of spring training.

All of this isn't to say that Bumgarner is destined for a similar scenario in 2015. But there has to be some concern over his massive workload this season.

Bumgarner shot past his career high in innings—223.1 in 2012—by 46.2 frames. That's a steep increase, but it's not necessarily a scary one, for a few reasons.

First, Bumgarner has never had any serious arm or shoulder problems as a big leaguer.

Second, he has made at least 31 starts and thrown at least 201.1 innings since 2010 (counting the half-season he spent at Triple-A before coming up for good that year).

And third, Bumgarner is a big, sturdy 6'5", 235-pounder in peak physical condition at the age of 25 years old.

It's worth noting that the Giants played it relatively safe with Bumgarner in the two seasons following postseason runs. After 214.1 total frames in 2010, he dropped to 204.2 in 2011; and he followed that 223.1 career high in 2012 with 201.1 in 2013.

Of course, San Francisco didn't make the playoffs in either 2011 or 2013, so that helped keep Bumgarner's workloads in check.

Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

There's no way the Giants will let Bumgarner get close to 270 innings again in 2015, even if they do make it to October in (gasp) an odd-numbered year. It would behoove them to consider skipping a start here and there or at least pushing him back whenever possible, just as a way to get him some extra rest.

This is nothing manager Bruce Bochy and pitching coach Dave Righetti don't know already, but it's merely to point out that the Giants are likely to ease up on Bumgarner a bit next year. That's the smart—and safe—play.

After all, the way they're going, they'll want him raring to go for even-yeared title run No. 4 in 2016.

Statistics are accurate through the 2014 season and courtesy of MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs, unless otherwise noted.

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