The Giants’ new brass, led by Farhan Zaidi, made a gamble this past offseason. They chose not to trade their ace in the final year of his contract in the hopes that his performance in the early part of 2019 would raise his value to teams looking to bolster their staff before the playoffs. The Giants haven’t given anybody a good reason to follow them closely this season so you may not be aware of how this gamble has turned out for Farhan Zaidi. Or perhaps, you glanced at Bumgarner’s ERA(4.10) in the last few weeks and thought “oof, I bet Zaidi wishes he traded him in January.”

I’m here to argue, however, that there are reasons to think this plan hasn’t backfired and that Bumgarner might actually look appealing to a playoff contender based entirely on what he is doing on the mound right now; not playoff successes a half decade in the past. I’m not going to talk about his playoff track record because I don’t believe modern teams drastically alter their opinion of a player based on those things. I’m going to look at the things that modern teams care about: velocity, spin rate and an ability to generate whiffs.

This article centers on Madison Bumgarner’s fastball because that pitch was his bread and butter throughout his prime. According to Fangraphs’ Pitch Value metric his fastball was the 5th best fastball in baseball from 2013-2016(what I’m calling his prime). He never relied on elite velocity but sitting 92/93 was enough when paired with his command and pterodactyl-like delivery.