Feel free to argue that Alex Gordon should have tried for a game-tying, inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Feel free to debate whether three titles in five seasons constitutes a “dynasty.”

Feel free to try to pinpoint the season-altering moment for the Giants.

I merely wish to posit that Madison Bumgarner’s five innings of dominant, scoreless relief capped off possibly the most dominant pitching performances in postseason and World Series history.

As Grant Brisbee of McCovey Chronicles recaps:

Then came Game 7.
What was Bumgarner good for? Two innings, maybe. If the Giants have a lead and he’s pitching well, maybe three. It was hard to see him doing more than that. It was also easy to see this whole endeavor not working out. His first pitch was 85 and away from the target by a bunch. He fell behind, 2-0. He gave up a hit to the first batter he faced. If the next three hitters doubled, who here would blame Bumgarner? It was the situation that was a jerk. It was a team with no better choice than a 39-year-old with an ailing hip and floating sinker, with the backup plan being a young pitcher on two day’s rest. A young pitcher who was going to set a postseason record for innings pitched.
He fell behind 2-0 again, this time to a hitter who was trying to make an out on purpose. Ned Yost says that Alcides Escobar was bunting on his own, and I believe him. It was still a bad baseball play. It was going for one run when there were five on the table. That was the time. That was the time when it all fell apart.
Bumgarner took the free out. Not before looking at second for a moment that FREAKED ME OUT, but he took the free out. Then he blew a snotrocket, looked at the moon and whispered, “Someday, I will ride one of those snotrockets all the way to you, big feller, and I will claim you for my own.” Probably.
Regardless, everything changed after that. A celestial breaker flipped, and the World Series ended. It took 14 more outs to do it, technically, but as soon as Bumgarner got his first out, he was as brilliant as he’d ever been. There was a sketchy moment immediately after, when Norichika Aoki lined a ball to left, but Juan Perez was perfectly positioned. After that, the sketchy moments were mostly wisps and phantoms that were easy to ignore. Bumgarner was dominant after that. . . .
For a pitcher who threw 50 strikes [out of 68 pitches], where are the hittable strikes? There were three pitches in the middle of the zone, all in the ninth inning. That ninth was probably all Bumgarner had in him, but he could still get the fastballs above the zone to [Salvador] Perez in the last at-bat.
Me? Once Gregor Blanco dove-not-dove and Juan Perez kicked the ball around, I would have melted into a puddle of goo. Just trembling, wriggling goo. Bochy would have gone out with a Dixie Cup, scraped me in, and called for Casilla. Bumgarner gave exactly zero bothers. He snotrocketed a snotrocket and pumped fastball fastball fastball by a hitter who just couldn’t lay off. He looked as strong as he did in his first pitch in Game 1.
Madison Bumgarner, the high school pitcher drafted when the Giants were desperate for a college hitter, the pitcher who lost his fastball and was going to be relegated to the what-if of prospect purgatory, the pitcher who was neck and neck with Tim Alderson on the Giants’ prospect lists for a while, the pitcher who already had two stellar World Series starts and victories before he turned 24. He was already a World Series legend, something to put on the dust jacket to get you to buy the book, not a footnote. Then came Game 7.
Then came Game 7.
We’ve seen a lot over the five years, most of it things we were sure we’d never see. Then came Game 7. There will be a century of World Series highlights between now and 2114, and they’ll still be talking about Madison Bumgarner.

So there’s only one more question remaining:

What are you doing next, MadBum? (Cue Disney music.)

. . .

“Get some cold cuts! Get some cold cuts!“

More here.