The San Francisco Giants and Madison Bumgarner could be headed for a reunion — just not on the pitcher’s mound.
Buster Posey, Bumgarner’s longtime catcher and now the Giants’ president of baseball operations, alluded to that possible reunion this week in an appearance on the latest Starkville edition of The Athletic’s “Windup” podcast.
The close Posey-Bumgarner relationship came up as Posey was telling a story about Bumgarner’s heroic relief appearance in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. In the middle of that tale, however, Posey suggested the Giants haven’t seen the last of their former ace.
“He’s been really fun to talk to over these last couple of months (since Posey moved into his new front-office role), because he surprised me that he wants to have some sort of involvement,” Posey said. “I kind of figured, once he was done, that (we would) kind of never hear from him again, and he’d just disappear and … go be in the woods somewhere.
“But I’m extremely excited about him being able to just share some of his experience with some of our young pitchers. And look, I don’t have anything set in stone with him yet, and I don’t want to jump to anything with him. But I’m just happy that it seems like there’s a willingness for him to want to give back, because he’s just a wealth of knowledge. And talk about a mentality — I mean, I never played with a pitcher that had the mentality like he did.”
Asked Tuesday if he could expand on what type of involvement Bumgarner might have, Posey told The Athletic, via text: “My sense is, it will be a very limited role just based on what he wants to do from a schedule/timing standpoint. Could be as simple as coming to spring training for a week or so.”
It was 15 years ago, in September of 2009, that Posey and Bumgarner debuted with the Giants within three days of each other. They remain indelibly connected, from their beginnings in pro baseball through all of the Giants’ glory years in the 2010s.
Posey and Bumgarner were each drafted in the first round, by the Giants, in back-to-back years — Bumgarner in 2007 and Posey in 2008. Posey caught Bumgarner at two minor-league levels. And Posey was behind the plate for every one of Bumgarner’s 16 postseason trips to the mound.
Bumgarner, who is still only 35, eventually left the Giants to sign with Arizona — and made 69 starts with the Diamondbacks from 2020-23. Posey retired after a spectacular 2021 season with the Giants in which he hit .304 with a 140 OPS+. He then moved his family to Georgia, only to return as his involvement with the Giants’ ownership and front office grew over the last year.
But for both of these men, the game that truly carved out The Legend of MadBum was Game 7 of the 2014 World Series in Kansas City. The Giants had been blown out, 10-0, in a potential clincher in Game 6. Then their Game 7 starter, Tim Hudson, didn’t make it through the second inning the next day.
So after the Giants took a 3-2 lead in the fourth, their manager, Bruce Bochy, waved for Bumgarner to stomp out of the bullpen in the fifth — just three days after he’d pitched a complete-game shutout in Game 5.
Asked on Starkville what he remembered most vividly about Bumgarner in that game, Posey rewound the DVR in his head to the moment the bullpen gates opened.
“For me, it’s when he came out of the bullpen,” Posey said. “Just the sense we were kind of on the ropes at that point, and there was some momentum for Kansas City. I think the fan base probably thought, ‘OK, we’re done with this guy, right? He threw a complete-game shutout in Game 5, (so) we’re not going to have to see him anymore.’
“And they smoked us in Game 6. … So it was like a collective silence when those bullpen doors swung open and, you know, you’ve got this big, 6-4, wide-frame-shoulder guy from North Carolina come walking out. And … I was like, ‘All right, OK. Maybe he can stabilize us here. We can get two to three innings out of him, score some more runs and turn it over to the bullpen.’ And I mean, he just willed himself to a historically great game, a historically great postseason performance.”
If Bumgarner had only thrown two or three workmanlike innings that day, Posey wouldn’t have found himself spinning these tales about him a decade later. But of course, that’s not how that game unfolded at all.
Five innings of epic emergency relief later, the Royals still hadn’t scored, the Giants had won their third World Series in five years, and Madison Bumgarner was an official October folk hero.
“What’s the alternative? You don’t even go after them? Well, you’re definitely not getting them at that point?”
Buster Posey, on what the Giants’ learned from their pursuit of Aaron Judge & others.
Check out this clip from the pod! https://t.co/DCSWikW5P5 pic.twitter.com/QOPiinjbMv
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) November 26, 2024
You can hear Posey reminisce more about that game on Starkville. But even as he concluded that story and reflected on Bumgarner’s larger-than-life presence and inner strength, the new architect of the Giants’ front-office path couldn’t resist dreaming about how much Bumgarner could still contribute to the team’s next journey to the postseason.
“That’s the type of stuff — right? — that I got to experience as a player,” Posey said, “and that I long for the next generation of players to experience, and for them just to understand the impact that it can have on their lives and so many others.”
Is it possible that Bumgarner could get even more involved down the road? Posey hasn’t ruled anything out. He’d just like to get Bumgarner back in a Giants’ uniform, in whatever setting works, and see where it leads.
To hear more from Posey — on life in the front office, the Giants’ offseason plans, what they learned from not being able to sign their big free-agent targets like Aaron Judge, and much more, check out the latest Starkville.
(Top photo of Madison Bumgarner at the 10th anniversary celebration of the Giants’ 2014 World Series championship: Robert Edwards / Imagn Images)
