Madison Bumgarner, a Durable Ace, Goes Deep for the Giants

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The 110th World Series begins on Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium, and one team's joy ride will end. The Kansas City Royals have won eight consecutive games, a record to start a postseason. The San Francisco Giants have won nine consecutive postseason rounds, with championship trophies from 2010 and 2012 to prove it.

'No matter what happens,' Madison Bumgarner said, 'it's a pretty special run we've been on.'

In Bumgarner, the Giants believe they have the pitcher to make it even more special. He faces James Shields in Game 1, and while Shields has the rhyming nickname - Big Game James - it is Bumgarner who has risen like no other player this postseason. It is nothing new for him.

Bumgarner is from Hickory, N.C., and said he grew up rooting for the Atlanta Braves of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. Each of those pitchers had one career World Series start of at least seven shutout innings. Bumgarner, just 25, already has two: Game 4 against Texas in 2010 and Game 2 against Detroit in 2012.

In four starts this postseason, his earned run average is 1.42. He spun a complete-game shutout in the wild-card game at Pittsburgh and was the most valuable player in the National League Championship Series against St. Louis.

Most impressive, though, has been his durability. Bumgarner has averaged more than seven and two-thirds innings per start. All of the other starters in this postseason have averaged fewer than five and two-thirds innings per start. In a field loaded with aces, Bumgarner, on average, has been two innings stronger than the rest of the field.

'We shut him down last year at the end,' said Dave Righetti, the Giants' pitching coach. 'We let him get to 200 innings, but he felt it and he wanted to do something about that. So this whole year, he's been developing himself and getting ready for the postseason, hoping to get into it - and if we did, he'd just feel stronger and in good shape.'

Many pitchers adhere rigidly to a routine between starts. But Righetti said that Bumgarner adapted his routine to how he feels. He warmed up differently before his Game 1 start in the N.L.C.S. from the way he did for his start in Game 5.

Both were successful, and by the end of the second, Bumgarner had reached 249 total innings for the season. But he said in the last two months, he had felt as good as he had all season, and he strives to pitch deep into games.

'That's always the goal for me,' Bumgarner said. 'I think any pitcher, you don't ever want to get the ball taken away from you.'

Shields has not collected an out past the sixth inning in three postseason starts, but that does not bother the Royals, who are eager to begin their bullpen relay in the seventh. More concerning is Shields's 5.63 E.R.A., which he said he would forget.

'I'm a big believer in amnesia,' Shields said.

Bumgarner lost in August at Kauffman Stadium, but there is no need to erase the memory. He pitched a complete game and gave up three earned runs, part of a season in which he went 18-10 with a 2.98 E.R.A. He uses a fastball, cutter, curveball and changeup, and he wears out the palm of Matt Cain's glove when they play catch.

'It's no fun,' said Cain, who is injured and will miss the World Series. 'He's got one of those heavy balls that kind of jumps on you. When he starts playing with his cutter, you just hope you have a glove big enough to catch it in the web.'

The Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw is a lock for the N.L. Cy Young Award, but Bumgarner will get votes among the top five and eagerly watches other left-handers in his class. He pays close attention to Jon Lester, who also uses four pitches to both sides of the plate, and has studied Kershaw's slide step to help control the running game.

Bruce Bochy, the Giants' manager, said Bumgarner had a higher leg kick when he first arrived, at age 20 in 2009, and when runners guessed correctly, there was no way to throw them out. Now, he said, Bumgarner has a better pickoff move and a heightened awareness of potential stolen bases. He allowed only seven this season, so the speedy Royals will test him and catcher Buster Posey at their own risk.

Posey said Bumgarner had also refined his ability to spot hitters' clues.

'He's gotten better at that,' Posey said. 'He's able to, maybe in the middle of an at-bat, pick up on something. Say it looks like a guy's swing is kind of going down and in - he'll stay out of that zone. It's one of those things that probably doesn't get talked about much, but that in-game adjustment, he's really good at that.'

Bumgarner had a tendency to rush his delivery when he first arrived, Righetti said, but he controls it better now. He does not step across his body quite as much as people think, Righetti added; his glove, once pointed toward the middle of the first-base dugout, now tends to point toward the on-deck circle.

Still, the crossfire effect is unusual, and was so jarring that the Giants tried to make Bumgarner throw more traditionally in his first few starts at Class A Augusta in 2008, after drafting him 10th over all out of high school the previous June.

'It didn't work out at all,' Bumgarner said this summer. 'It was awful.'

The two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum, now largely forgotten in the Giants' bullpen, thrived with a delivery designed to make him uncoil like a spring when he delivered the pitch. It was unconventional, but it worked for Lincecum because he had used it for so long and knew his physical cues.

'It's always going to be something that you feel comfortable with, mechanically,' Lincecum said, 'and something that makes you feel like you're not getting hurt.'

The importance of that last part cannot be overstated. In a regular season partly defined by a rash of pitching injuries, Bumgarner is the last ace standing, at his strongest when it matters most.

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