Tag Archives: Madison Bumgarner

Out of Left Field

Before I joined TortureCast in August 2011, I regularly contributed a segment on the show called, “Out of Left Field.” It was usually a short 60 seconds of me rambling on about some esoteric stat, streak, or oddity of the Giants’ season.

I’ve decided to resurrect it, and potentially in audio format once again. Because, who doesn’t like listening to themselves? Ok, I don’t, so here it is in digital print. At least most fonts aren’t embarrassing. Except for Comic Sans, of course.

  • The Giants finally broke their 9 game skid at home, which was the longest losing streak since 1940 at the Polo Grounds. I mean, that’s when gas was 18 cents a gallon and my grandmother was still in France about to hide from the Nazis.
  • Despite tonight’s 2-0 loss, MadBum pitched well and was perfect for 4 2/3 until a cleat-made divot caused a ball to bounce at Crawford’s insured face, necessitating the scorekeeper to laugh diabolically and mark it as a hit. Maybe that had a butterfly effect on the Giants’ offense. No, wait, no, that had about as much affect on their offense as I do screaming at the TV while I tear the wings off of a butterfly.
  • The Giants are 5-12 since their high-water mark of 30-20. After starting the season 4-10, that means the “meat” of the season sandwich was 26-10.
  • Giants are 8 GB of last year’s record after 67 games. In fact, they haven’t been worse at this point over the last 5 seasons: 2013: 0 GB, 2012: 2 GB, 2011: 3 GB, 2010: 2 GB
  • Marco Scutaro was symbolically re-signed by the Giants and immediately placed on the 60-day DL. He can now retire a Giant. And to think that I truly believed (last year) that he would certainly come back at some point to relive his glory days in 2012 and 2013. Sadly, he’s rehabbing his 2 fused vertebrae and hoping to “live a normal life, pain free” with his family. Egad. He might not ever play even beer league softball. I’ll stop my bitching about my injured wrist that prevents me from cleaning and jerking in my CrossFit sessions. And jerking.
  • Matt Cain and Jake Peavy are close to coming back into the rotation, but the Giants have stated that they will not go to a six man rotation, which begs the obvious, “who’s out?” I’d say take out Mike Murphy. There are no alternatives.
  • As of today, the Royals would have 8 starters in the All Star Game. If this holds, it’ll be the National League vs. the Royals, plus Mike Trout. I “kind of” want this to happen, if only to force MLB into changing this ridiculous ASG voting by the fans. Ok, well, Aoki is currently slated to start for the NL (being a former Royal), so maybe just this year…. In fact, wouldn’t it be something if Giants fans propelled 8 Giants starters to the final ballot? Man, the Royals could get their revenge…
  • Don’t look now, but Arizona is only two games back of the Giants. I thought Diamondbacks were not allowed to pray to their snake goddess.
  • Chris Heston was named NL player of the week. I wonder if anyone HASN’T been named that after a no-hitter. Glad someone else didn’t throw a perfect game that week, I suppose.
  • Maybe the Warriors can win every odd year championship.
  • Javier Lopez: 0.96 ERA, 0.64 WHIP. Dayum.
  • Giants are hitting .284 as a team on the road, which leads all MLB, 12 points higher than the next team. Can haz hitting at home? (.249)
  • Despite the last few downturns, they’re only 2.5 games back of the Bums. Could be worse. Let’s get back to that meat I mentioned earlier. Maybe it was grand salame?

Chad

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Episode 83: Fat Cats

One of these two hit their first MLB homerun tonight (Photo: Tom Duffy)

Yes. That is Matt Duffy (on the left, of course) chilling with his 40 pound cat Skeeter while playing Call of Duty. We thought you’d need a smile before diving into this autopsy of the Giants’ first 10 games of the season.

You can download episode 83 here, or stream it below!

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-04-15T22_34_40-07_00.mp3]

Welcome to our first regular season podcast of the 2015. Hopefully it won’t be the last. We’ve been a fortunate group of guys able to podcast about 3 World Series championships, watch from the press box and interview players, but the first week of the season feels like the Houston Astros. Despite winning three of their first four, the Giants are in a tailspin with a current 6-game losing streak. Their bats have not just gone cold, they are stored in liquid nitrogen. They are a whopping 5 for 47 with runners in scoring position. They can get runners on buy the truckload, they just can’t deliver them home.

Eric and Chad talk about the frustrating start to the season, throw around ideas on how to fix it, discuss Heston’s place in the rotation, get peaved at Peavy, and at one point, bask in the glow of the home opener and Bum on a horse.

It can’t get any worse, can it?

– Chad will be in the press box at AT&T on Saturday night to cover the ring ceremony and game versus Arizona. Be sure to follow @TortureCast on Twitter for copious updates and pictures of endless coffee.

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SF Giants preview: The starting rotation

Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants

Photo credit: NBC

Well here we are. The 2015 San Francisco Giants season is upon us. I thought I’d take this time to preview the season and throw out some predictions. I’m sure you’ve read the “big boy” publications and what they forecast for the season so I’m not going to even mention the fact that none of them are giving the Giants a chance to do big things this season.

Nope. Won’t mention it at all. That whole odd year thing? I won’t mention that either.

Since I tend to get wordy and long-winded I’m going to break this up in to 3 different parts. This one is all about the starting rotation, next will be the regular lineup, and finally I’ll close with the bullpen/bench players. I’m cheating a little bit because I’m trying to give the Giants some time to make their final roster decisions. The longer I put off the bench/bullpen, the better chance there is that we will actually know who’s made the cut.

I also want to note that I don’t have 2015 projections up for the guys. I’m sure Ben Lee or Chad King may have something like that, but not me. It’s not that I hate all the new stats, I’m just not the guy that’s going to give them to you. Think of me as the scout type that is holding on to the eye test, even if it’s to my own detriment. Also, I’m throwing out all the spring stats because frankly, they are ugly.

So without further ado, I present part 1, the starting rotation.

Madison Bumgarner

2014: 18-10, 2.98 ERA, 33 Starts, 4 CG, 2 SHO, 43 BB, 219 K, 217.1 IP

The ace of the staff. What more can be said about the job he did for the Giants in 2014? Well, probably volumes of work, but that’s not what I’m here for today. The biggest question mark is how Bumgarner will respond this season after compiling 270 total innings between the regular season and playoffs a year ago. His previous high was 2012 when he tossed 223.1 innings. He followed that with just over 200 innings in 2013 while posting his lowest career ERA (2.77) in 31 starts. Continue reading

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Episode 81: Can’t Have Sissy Hands

Stream this podcast below:

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-03-24T00_10_18-07_00.mp3]

or, download it here

Spring Training has not been kind to the Giants. They own the worst record, by far, in all of MLB. Hunter Pence got broke, and Bochy is actually worried about his team’s performance.

Chad, Ben and Eric try and talk each other down from the ledge, and bring some levity to the foreboding results from the Giants’ practice games thus far.

Hey, it’s an odd year, afterall.

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Episode 80: Jerry Rice

You can download this episode here, or

Stream it below:

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-02-23T23_03_20-08_00.mp3]

Yes, Jerry is a 49er, but we covered him at the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach this month, so it sort of, by proxy, regionally counts to fit our jersey-number-title-thing that is dying. So, here’s a video of Jerry leading the group “Buster Hug” that we caught on film earlier this month.

The boys are back in Arizona! Timmy reunites with his dad, Pablo is still fat, Cain is throwing wild and free, Ben and Chad review their experience and interviews at Media Day, Bochy’s heart had a scare, Sheilds rejected a larger offer from the Giants, Moncada signed with Boston, and the first radio broadcast of a spring training game is next week, March 3.

Can’t you just smell the fresh cut grass through your media player of choice?

You can follow us on Twitter @TortureCast and like us on Facebook! All of our podcasts and video and audio San Francisco Giants player interviews can be found here or YouTube.com/TortureCast.

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Interviews with 8 SF Giants at Media Day

Today we were able to snag interviews with eight Giants at Media Day at AT&T Park, including Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Matt Cain, Brandon Crawford, Travis Ishikawa, Joe Panik and Casey McGehee. Some of the players we had exclusive time with, others we shared questions with other reporters.

We’ll also be covering the Giants vs. 49ers charity shootout at Pebble Beach on Tuesday, 2/10!

All 8 interviews are below separately, the first one however, is the master playlist, and here is the playlist directly on YouTube.

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by | February 6, 2015 · 5:04 PM

Episode 79: Football is Over

We don’t care. You must see Pat Burrell save every drop of his “protein shake” in this slip ‘n slide. Yes, we all still want to be Pat the Bat.

Right Click here to download the podcast or

Click the arrow below to stream it!

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-02-02T23_45_07-08_00.mp3]

We regretfully dedicate the first portion of this episode of TortureCast to the Super Bowl and the bad? call at the 1 yard line. Willie, Chad and Eric catch up on all of the signings by the Giants, including Casey McGehee and Nori Aoki, and reminisce with our man-crush on Michael Morse, who is now a Miami Marlin. We will also be at Media Day on Feb 6 to interview as many Giants as we can, so if you have a question you want us to ask, let us know at torturecast AT gmail DOT com or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

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Top 14 SF Giants moments from 2014 part 2

SF Giants win 2014 World Series

Denny Medley, USA TODAY Sports

If you missed it, I covered the San Francisco Giants regular season in Part 1. Time for the good stuff.

As I mentioned yesterday, there are no ground rules for this list and everything is listed in chronological order. Moments can stick out for different reasons. The rough draft was literally me sitting on my front porch drinking coffee and just thinking about the playoffs. I really miss baseball.

At least 10 different things jumped out at me. For instance, I thought the Hunter Pence homer in Game 1 of the World Series was a huge moment. Then as I kept adding things to the list it got bumped down. So it gets an honorable mention. Others that just missed the cut were Hunter Strickland striking out Ian Desmond in Game 1 of the NLDS and Randy Choate throwing it away in Game 3 of the NLCS.

After some more beard scratching and coffee drinking on the front porch, here’s my 7 best moments of the Giants 2014 championship run.

October 1 – Crawford’s grand slam of silence and Bumgarner’s first shutout

Were you as nervous as I was heading in to this game? I hate coin-flip games. Anything can happen. Randomness can determine a ball game. So when the top of the 4th inning of the NL Wild Card game began to unfold we were all unsure of what would happen.  Continue reading

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Top 14 SF Giants moments from 2014

Photo: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Photo: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

As a San Francisco Giants fan, 2014 was a great freaking year. They won the World Series for the 3rd time in 5 years and cemented a dynasty in the modern game. There was a fast start to the season, a rut in the middle, and then a Fall surge to the title. We got to watch it all. Whether you saw them in Scottsdale, spent time on the shores of McCovey Cove, or just watched from the couch at home, all Giants fans will remember this past year as something special.

Here’s where I get to be corny. I’m going with the original idea of the 14 best moments from 2014. I know, I had to stretch far for that one. Someone else may have already beaten me to it, I don’t care. I want to relive what happened and I suspect you’ll enjoy reliving it too.

I have no ground rules for this list. A moment can be anything I want to shoehorn in just for the fun of it. It was just that kind of crazy, wonderful year. This will be split in to 2 parts. Today will be the regular season, Tuesday will be the playoffs. Everything will be in chronological order. All clips courtesy MLB and /or Youtube.

Click here for Part 2: The Posteseason.

March 31 – Opening Day comeback

The Giants wasted no time making the 2014 season exciting. Right away the team put together a comeback victory. After falling behind 6-2 and 7-3 to Arizona they put together a couple of rallys and started the year on a positive note. You didn’t want to look too much in to one game, but it felt like this team knew how to win right out of the gate.

Madison Bumgarner started and only lasted 4 innings. He allowed 4 runs but amazingly none of them were earned because of 2 errors by the infield to start the bottom of the 4th inning. The comeback started in the top of the 7th as Michael Morse singled off Brandon McCarthy to lead off the inning. Five pitches later McCarthy had 2 quick outs and Joaquin Arias was on 1st after a fielder’s choice. Ehire Adrianza then pinch hit and hooked a 3-2 pitch into the RF corner to score Arias. It  began a streak of 5 consecutive hits with 2 outs. Continue reading

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Episode 78: Chasing Hot Stove Lesters

Google says this is one “Jonathan Lester.” Hmmm

You can download the podcast here, or stream it below!

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2014-12-08T23_56_03-08_00.mp3]

It’s been a month since we recorded our gloriously long World Series Championship podcast, but our livers and tear glands have recovered enough to deliver our first “hot stove” podcast of the offseason. Chad, Ben, and Eric talk about the impending Lester decision (probably made by the time you listen to this), and the Giants options to fill their holes in left field and third base. Tim Flannery retired, and Madison Bumgarner won Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year,” which apparently ripped off the fresh collective scabs of millions of KC Royals fans.

You can follow us on Twitter @TortureCast and like us on Facebook! All of our podcasts and video and audio San Francisco Giants player interviews can be found here at TortureCast.com.

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