Quick Bumgarner + Giants Pitching facts:

Completely disregarding the horrible outlier that was his start against the Twins, Madison Bumgarner would have a sub-3.00 ERA of 2.95 entering today’s game — which would classify him as 9th-best in the NL ERA standings.

If that was the case, all four of our eligible starting pitchers — Lincecum, Vogelsong, Cain, and Bumgarner — would be in the top 10 (5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th respectively).

Bumgarner has also drastically improved many of his stats compared to last year. 

2010 -> 2011

• K/9: 7.0 -> 8.6
• K/BB: 3.31 -> 3.96
• HR/9: 0.9 -> 0.5
• WHIP: 1.306 -> 1.232

It shouldn’t be surprising to see that he’s been having great improvements since he’s so young. He’s completely sharpened his command of the strike-zone, and his pitches can be just downright nasty when they have to be. But this is just his first full-year pitching in the majors. What scares me is how incredible he will be, let’s say, 5 years from now. Will we see great ace-material, like we see with Tim and Matt, or will we possibly see him even greater than that? I really want to see what this country boy’s got.