Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum Watch as Madison Bumgarner Emerges as October Icon

SAN FRANCISCO — The ace went for a dip of bubble gum. The third-base coach went for a swatch of "wow."

"You sore?" Tim Flannery asked Madison Bumgarner.

"No room for sore," the San Francisco Giants hurler grunted back.

"You're an animal," Flannery marveled.

Welcome to the Giants' world, where a club that once followed Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain to championships now watches Bumgarner in this World Series with a mixture of awe, pride, appreciation and sheer gum-smacking enthusiasm.

Some 17 hours earlier, Bumgarner had blasted even deeper into October lore. He pitched the Giants to a 7-1 Game 1 victory and ran his streak of consecutive World Series scoreless innings to start a career to 21 straight before he finally surrendered a harmless Salvador Perez home run. That put him second all time behind Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson (28).

On Wednesday afternoon, he stopped by the dugout bubble-gum tub on his way onto the field for batting practice. As if the Kansas City Royals didn't have enough of a sticky situation on their hands already, knowing that however this Fall Classic turns, Bumgarner awaits them again in Game 5 on Sunday.

"It's the natural maturation of where they're at," bench coach Ron Wotus said. "You had Lincecum winning Cy Young Awards, Cain pitching a perfect game and doing what he's done; Madison was going to get pushed back to No. 3.

"Now, look."

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

From underneath his hoodie, Lincecum, 30, sadly sees a World Series moving along without him, at least until an emergency relief appearance in Game 2 that ended, cruelly, with a sore back and a 7-2 Royals win.

From the island of injury rehabilitation, Cain, also 30, helplessly watches Bumgarner, 25, take the curtain calls that once were reserved for him.

"He's done such a tremendous job from the beginning of this postseason," Cain, who had surgery in the summer to remove bone chips in his elbow, told Bleacher Report on Wednesday afternoon. "He's the one who is going to be leading this staff, and he deserves to be. He is a tremendous big-game pitcher."

Bumgarner was stuck in both of their shadows, but time moves on.

Bumgarner is now 3-1 with a 1.40 ERA in five starts this postseason. He has worked at least seven innings in every one of those starts. He has pitched a total of 256 innings this year, not including spring training, yet he didn't look the least bit taxed while throttling the Royals in Game 1. As catcher Buster Posey quipped to Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal on the telecast, Bumgarner "could probably pitch until December and be fine."

"It's really fun to watch, because the guy has been fighting for the chance to show what he's got," Lincecum, who has done a remarkable job of staying upbeat and engaged during his October exile, told B/R late Wednesday night.

"You get lost in the shadows of the identities of the team and the rest of the guys, and now his emergence is pretty special. Especially for a guy who's young and keeps ticking up. He's not staying the same; he's not complacent."

To Cain, it's reminiscent of when he was the young phenom on the staff and veteran starters like Matt Morris helped bring him along.

Now, Cain and Lincecum watch the man who once was their understudy rocket toward the stratosphere.

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

"Not everyone gets as locked in and stays up to speed with everyone else," Giants general manager Brian Sabean said. "Development continues at the major league level. Boch [manager Bruce Bochy] has two of the best pitching coaches in the major leagues in Dave Righetti and [bullpen coach] Mark Gardner.

"Boch gets it. He knows how to juggle a pitching staff."

If your definition of "juggle" is consistently helping them evolve and improve, putting them in positions to win and making sure their heads are right while keeping them all remarkably healthy (Cain had logged eight consecutive seasons of 184 or more innings until his elbow barked this year) then, yes, Bochy is a master juggler.

"The amazing thing with Bumgarner is that he had such eye-popping success at such an early age," continued Sabean, who signed Bumgarner to a five-year, $35 million deal with club options for 2018 and 2019 in April 2012. "Really, the only thing you can ask from a starting pitcher is making his starts and logging innings. Do the work. You've got to be able to handle the workload.

"Some years, you do it better than others."

Bumgarner now has crossed the 200-innings mark in four consecutive seasons. But the first glimpse of what could be came in a long-ago October, when he stiff-armed Texas over eight shutout innings in Game 4 of the 2010 World Series, fatally wounding the Rangers by pushing them into a 3-1 hole. He was all of 21 years old then.

"That was as bad as I had seen some of those Texas hitters look," Flannery said.

This month, the Pirates, Nationals, Cardinals and, now, Royals know the feeling.

Kansas City's No. 2 hitter, lefty Nori Aoki, went 0-for-3 against Bumgarner the other night and now is 0-for-16 with two strikeouts against him over his career.

Over his career, Aoki is a .319 hitter against left-handed pitchers in 537 plate appearances.

"The angle," Aoki told B/R the other night through a Japanese translator. "He has really long arms. He hides the ball well. It seems like the ball is coming from behind him.

"Even though he is only throwing 93, 94 mph, it feels a lot faster."

Aoki arrived in the majors in 2012, long after Randy Johnson retired. But from watching the Big Unit on television, Aoki said, that's who he imagines Bumgarner is most like.

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Bumgarner's three-quarters delivery—the way he slings the ball almost sidearm—gives him a completely different look from anyone else. Few of his pitches are straight. His slider bores in on right-handed hitters and slurves away from lefties. Though his fastball tops out at around 93 mph and his slider sits at 86-87, his curve dips down to 72-73. And he broke out a couple Tuesday night that were agonizingly slow—and tantalizing—at 67 mph.

No dice. The Royals still couldn't solve him.

Their biggest threat came in the third inning, when they put runners on second and third with no outs and Bumgarner's World Series scoreless innings streak still intact. The near-rally started when shortstop Brandon Crawford uncharacteristically booted leadoff man Omar Infante's ground ball.

Interesting thing here is you would think Crawford would feel especially bad when he makes a misplay behind Bumgarner. But it's actually the opposite.

"I don't feel good about it after any error," Crawford said (the play was scored an infield single). "But with him, I have confidence that he's going to work his way out of it."

Danny Moloshok/Associated Press

When he did this time, the misplay remained unspoken between them. But coming off the field, Bumgarner and Crawford exchanged knowing taps with their gloves.

"Huge sigh of relief for me after that inning," Crawford said. "He's been unbelievable. He almost gets better in the postseason when it really matters. He's a very mature 25-year-old. He's not scared of anybody."

"Madison Bumgarner is a really, really special talent," veteran starter Jake Peavy said, noting that he watched Jon Lester do so much in Boston last season, including dominate in October. He's worked on imparting some of that knowledge to Bumgarner.

Some of that involves studying video, a modern tool that Bumgarner avoids.

"We're taking baby steps with Bum," Peavy said, smiling.

Giant leaps do not appear forthcoming. It's not that video is foreign to Bumgarner. He's tried it. He just doesn't like it.

In watching video of his own delivery, Bumgarner believes it is too difficult to see every nuance.

"The frames per minute, or per second, whatever it is, there aren't enough to show what you need to see," he said.

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And video of opposing hitters?

"I feel it gets in my head," he said. "I see them hit the ball hard, and then I feel like I can't throw that pitch.

"The other thing is, you come up with a specific game plan, and then it's hard to adjust from that if you've watched video. I feel like I'm more in the game when I can just read hitters and read situations.

"You're more into the game that way, instead of focusing on what you're trying to do."

In other words, like any great artist, he prefers to create by feeling. He ignores anything that carries the hint of an instructional manual. Watching the master at work this year, it's hard to argue.

Now, the Giants are in position to win a third World Series in five seasons and the ace baton has been passed from Lincecum to Cain to the man who Flannery called an "animal."

From the shadows—the spot Bumgarner once occupied—Lincecum and Cain now battle their own issues.

After being put on ice for 24 days, Lincecum now hopes his back doesn't sideline him just when he showed he can still contribute. Meanwhile, he appears to be the same guy as ever in the clubhouse.

"Timmy is very loyal," Sabean said, appreciatively. "He is very much dialed into the team."

Said Lincecum: "I'm fine. I'm in a good place."

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

As for Cain, the Giants expect him to be 100 percent when camp opens next spring.

"We don't expect any speed bumps," Sabean said. "We really think he'll be ready to start the '15 season on time. That's our goal."

Whether the Giants open that season defending their third World Series title in five seasons, these next several days—and, Bumgarner—will tell.

From the fringes, Lincecum and Cain are rooting hard.

"It never gets old, coming in here and saying, 'Hey Bum, way to go. Way to put us in that position. Great job,'" Lincecum says. "With that you see the growth of a guy and a competitor who gives us a chance to win on any given day. And he's done that every time he's gone out.

"He retains that presence. It's something special, especially this time of year."

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl.