Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner Duel Puts Ace Lefties Back on Track

Everyone, open your arms and give a kind "Welcome back" to Clayton Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner.

They're back, all right. We can tell from how the two of them pitched in their showdown at AT&T Park on Tuesday night.

In a matchup that was billed by MLB.com as the first between a reigning MVP and a reigning World Series MVP, neither Kershaw nor Bumgarner was around to see the end of Tuesday night's contest. By the time Joe Panik's walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth had given the San Francisco Giants a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, both ace lefties were long gone.

Nonetheless, both certainly had a hand in creating the nail-biting atmosphere.

Bumgarner lasted six and one-third innings, surrendering two runs on six hits, two walks and six strikeouts. Kershaw lasted six innings and also gave up two runs, limiting the Giants to three hits and a walk with nine strikeouts.

Pitcher	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	Pitches-Strikes
Kershaw	6	3	2	2	1	9	0	93-64
Bumgarner	6.1	6	2	2	2	6	1	109-72

Had you looked a couple of weeks ago and seen this matchup coming, you might have predicted final lines like those with little more than a shrug and a "Duh." But in this case, they're a welcome sight.

After posting a 2.98 ERA in the regular season and then a fiendishly dominant 1.03 ERA in the postseason last year, Bumgarner wasn't looking too much like himself in his first three starts of 2015. He came into his showdown with Kershaw with a 5.29 ERA in 17.0 innings.

Kershaw wasn't doing too much better. After posting his second straight sub-2.00 ERA and winning his third Cy Young in four years in 2014, he began 2015 with just a 4.42 ERA in 18.1 innings.

Thus was the script for Tuesday's game given some unwelcome amendments. What was supposed to be a matchup between two elite aces was really more of a matchup between two pitchers looking to get on track.

And to this end, well, the final lines don't lie.

Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports

Between the two, Kershaw had less work to do in Tuesday's matchup. Though he came into the action with an uncharacteristic 4.42 ERA, he also had plenty of numbers that indicated he'd been pitching a lot better than that.

Namely, an excellent 12.8 strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate, a decent 3.0 walks-per-nine-innings rate and, according to FanGraphs, a solid 48.9 ground-ball percentage and an even higher swinging-strike rate (15.2) than last year's league-leading 14.1.

But there was one pretty big item on Kershaw's check list: his slider.

Easily the best pitch in his repertoire in 2014, Brooks Baseball says opponents hit .364 against Kershaw's slider in his first three starts. And this didn't happen simply because of bad luck.

Pedro Moura of The Orange County Register and Vincent Samperio of Dodgers Nation can vouch that Kershaw not having a feel for his slider was an early-season trend:

After what happened Tuesday night, Kershaw may finally be able to call off the search.

Per the raw PITCHf/x numbers from Brooks Baseball, 17 of the 23 sliders Kershaw threw went for strikes. Only three were of the swinging variety, but that obscures how Giants hitters looked more and more overmatched against Kershaw's slider as he got deeper into his outing.

By then, it was definitely looking the part. You can see as much by looking at the Brandon Crawford whiff in the middle of this GIF (courtesy of MLB GIFs):

Despite his ERA, Kershaw had more than enough working for him in his first three starts of the year. If he can now keep his slider working as well as it worked Tuesday night, he should be able to continue looking like...well, like Clayton Kershaw.

As for Bumgarner, his getting-on-track quest for Tuesday wasn't as simple as finding one pitch. Whatever it took, he needed to find pitches that could help him miss some bats.

Bumgarner didn't do a whole lot of that in his first three starts. He struck out only 11 batters in 17 innings, which can happen when your swinging-strike rate tumbles from 11.1 percent to 7.9 percent.

But good news! That number is now trending upward.

Of the 72 strikes Bumgarner got against the Dodgers, 11 were of the swinging variety. The distribution of those was pretty good, to boot, as the raw PITCHf/x numbers say he got four on his slider (or cutter, if you prefer), four on his curveball and three on his four-seam fastball.

Of the three pitches, Bumgarner's slider and curveball looked especially good. Probably better than they had in any of his three prior starts. But if there's a pitch worth watching going forward, it's his four-seamer.

Date	H-MOV
4/6/15	7.1
4/11/15	8.6
4/16/15	9.1
4/22/15	9.5

One of the secrets to the success of Bumgarner's four-seamer is how well he gets it to work up in the strike zone. A big reason he's able to do that is because it comes in with a decent amount of vertical movement. More and more every year, in fact.

At least until his first three starts this year, anyway, as Bumgarner's four-seamer had been coming in a little flatter. But with an average vertical break of 9.5 inches on Tuesday night, the rise on Bumgarner's four-seamer was the best it had been all season.

Want the short, less complicated version of all this?

OK then, here it is: For what was really the first time in 2015, Tuesday night's showdown saw Kershaw look like Kershaw and Bumgarner look like Bumgarner.

It was just a matter of time, to be sure, but this is still an occasion worthy of much rejoicing for those with a vested interest in Kershaw and Bumgarner. That would include the Dodgers and Giants, obviously, as well as fantasy owners everywhere and fans who just simply enjoy good pitching.

Really, the only losers here are whichever teams these two are set to face next. To them, there's only one thing to say:

Good luck, suckers.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball, unless otherwise noted/linked.

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