San Francisco Giants’ Madison Bumgarner is SI’s Sportsman of the Year
Sports Illustrated has named San Francisco Giants' Madison Bumgarner its sportsman of the year.
Bumgarner's performance as a starting pitcher shined throughout last season and especially during the Giants' run in the 2014 playoffs, leading to their third World Series Championship Trophy in five seasons. Bumgarner posted a 2.98 ERA in 213 1/3 innings pitched in the regular season.
During the postseason, Mad Bum, who is only 25-years-old, was even more remarkable with a 1.03 ERA over 52 2/3 innings of work. He struck out 45 batters and only walked six. In the seventh game of the World Aeries, Bumgarner pitched five scoreless innings in relief against the Kansas City Royals. He also earned the title of NLCS and World Series MVP.
"In Game 7 of the World Series against the Kansas City Royals, Bumgarner came on in relief of starter Tim Hudson on just two days rest after throwing a 117-pitch, four-hit shutout in Game 5. What he did over the next five innings (two hits, four strikeouts, no walks) will certainly go down in baseball lore," Scooby Axson with SI wrote.
"It's easy to mythologize the small-town sports hero. Baseball, especially, is full of them," SI's Managing Editor Chris Stone added. "Madison Bumgarner isn't the Sportsman of the Year because he's from a tiny town, but that town goes a long way toward defining who he is and it gives his story a different texture from past Sportsmen. And while he's been an outstanding pitcher for the last five years, his Sportsman candidacy was so sudden and seemingly out of nowhere that it makes him the most unique Sportsman in recent memory."
Bumgarner is the first baseball player to earn the SI sportsman of the year title since 2009 when that magazine selected now-retired New York Yankee, Derek Jeter. He is the first pitcher to be named by SI since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, who shared the title in 2001.
