Most of the time, a pitcher's plate appearances are best ignored. They happen because the rules in the National League say so, and it's something we all tolerate. While it's fun to think about Bartolo Colon hitting because those opportunities are of such visual pleasure, it's fun to think about Madison Bumgarner hitting because he's good at it.
He's very good at it, at least relative to what you'd expect of someone listed in every box score with a "P" next to his name. Bumgarner is such a good hitter for a pitcher that you can actually leave out those last three words -- for a pitcher -- and not be exaggerating.
Why does Bumgarner the hitter get so much coverage? You could ask: Why does Mike Trout get so much coverage? The answers are the same. Trout is the best player in the game. Bumgarner is the best hitting pitcher in the game. Madison Bumgarner, in fact, could be described as the Mike Trout of hitting pitchers.
Although Bumgarner is just 27 years old, he's the active leader in pitcher home runs with 16. On Opening Day, Bumgarner went deep twice, hitting one of those home runs 111 miles per hour, according to the ESPN Home Run Tracker. That's the 15th-fastest home run of the young season. It's faster than any home run Mookie Betts has hit so far in his career. It's faster than any Joey Votto home run over the past two-plus years. Bumgarner has hit for real power because he has real power.
During his entire major league career, Bumgarner the hitter has not been good. Maybe you know the stat wRC+. Maybe you don't know that one, but you do know OPS+. The idea is the same: 100 is average, better than that is better than average, etc. Bumgarner has a career wRC+ of 53, meaning he has been 47 percent worse than the average hitter. Still good for a pitcher, but not good-good.
This is where we have to make a call: When did Bumgarner turn good?
The answer seems to be 2014.
Through 2013, Bumgarner slugged .192. Since 2014, he has slugged .453. What we need now is an explanation.
Here's a video clip of Bumgarner's Opening Day home runs.
Here's a grand slam from 2014.
Here's a sacrifice fly from 2013.
Do you see what happened? Most visibly, Bumgarner added an aggressive leg kick.
Bumgarner worked to improve his timing going into 2014, and the results were immediate. I've talked myself into it then: Bumgarner became Bumgarner a little more than three years ago. So let's advance to some math.
Since 2014, Mike Trout leads everyone in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), at about 27, according to FanGraphs. WAR is one of those numbers that tries to combine everything. Now, in the same time span, 375 players have accumulated at least 500 plate appearances. For each of them, I calculated WAR per 600 PA, to put everyone over a common denominator. Trout still leads, of course, at +7.7. Second place is all the way down at +6.7.
It should be immediately clear that Trout is exceptional. Yet as another way to show this, we can use something called a z-score. For this, we consider the average number for everyone, and the standard deviation. In WAR/600, Trout is a full 3.4 standard deviations higher than the average. Here are the top five players, since the start of 2014:
No surprises. Maybe Pollock is a surprise? No big surprises. All right, keep that 3.4 in mind.
Over the same span, 118 pitchers have had at least 50 plate appearances. Bumgarner has cruised well beyond that, with 262. As you've already deduced, Bumgarner has been the best pitcher-hitter. For this, we'll run the same kind of analysis, but for wRC+ instead of WAR, because we're just focusing on the offensive threat. Here are the five best hitting pitchers:
Trout has been 3.4 standard deviations better than the average position player. As a hitter, Bumgarner has been 3.3 standard deviations better than the average pitcher. If you want to be really precise, Trout's at 3.41, and Bumgarner's at 3.34. The difference is negligible: Bumgarner has been the Trout of the group. Over this time period, Bumgarner has about the same wRC+ as Xander Bogaerts. Syndergaard is tied with Gordon Beckham and Corbin is tied with Nick Ahmed.
The other good offensive pitchers have hit like bad hitters. Bumgarner has hit like a fine hitter, which is why his offensive WAR since 2014 is 3.8. The next-best mark for a pitcher is 1.7. Bumgarner adds real wins through his work at the plate. And he's already, you know, an ace at the main part of his job.
Sam Miller recently asked, how good a hitter is Bumgarner, really? It's a fair question, given that he's a pitcher and his numbers are so absurd. It's difficult to buy Bumgarner as a true league-average hitter, because being a league-average hitter is so hard. On the other hand, the numbers are the numbers, right?
With the help of Baseball Savant, I've put together something experimental. We've got exit-velocity and launch-angle information going back to the start of 2015. So for all hitters since 2015, I looked at average exit velocity, average launch angle and swinging-strike rate. For any hitter, these are three core skills. Using more standard deviations and z-scores, I found Bumgarner's most comparable 10 hitters. Don't worry too much about the math. Just consider the table.
Bumgarner isn't being compared here to the elites. Simply put, he swings and misses too often. There's even another pitcher in here -- Jake Arrieta. But the average wRC+ is 89. The median is also 89. Khris Davis is probably the best hitter on the Oakland A's right now. And this list includes a good number of powerful types. If you're wondering about Bumgarner's so-called "true-talent wRC+," something around 90 wouldn't be a bad guess. And he has come in at 102. That's within a reasonable margin of error.
For a hitter, Bumgarner isn't a good hitter. Much of his power is offset by his strikeouts. However, for a hitter, he's something like an average hitter, and that's truly remarkable, because he's really a pitcher and you know pitchers can't hit. You already knew that Bumgarner was exceptional. But he really is sort of the Mike Trout of hitting pitchers.
And so every five games, the NL Giants are armed with an AL lineup. Having to bat a pitcher isn't always a drag.