KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Madison Bumgarner did not need to see the radar gun or the feeble swings of his teammates to know that Yordano Ventura was the right person on the mound for the Royals.

Ventura was only 23, but nobody should look at a man’s birth date to gauge his guts to pitch in a World Series elimination game. You can look at his stuff. If you are Bumgarner and pitched in a championship arena at 21, you look at his eyes. Bumgarner did. He could have been looking in a mirror.

“That’s a tough spot to be put in, but that’s the spot you want to be put in, like he was,” Bumgarner said. “He seemed like the kind of guy who pitched with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. I kind of like that. I don’t need to talk about his stuff, how electric it was and how good it was.”

On Tuesday night, the Giants return to Kauffman Stadium for the first time since the 2014 World Series. Much of the spotlight will shine on Bumgarner, who started two of the Giants’ four wins and saved Game 7 with five shutout innings to cement his reputation as one of history’s great postseason pitchers. He faces the Royals on Wednesday night.

At the same time, nobody should forget the pitcher who started two of the Royals’ three victories, who got his championship ring in 2015, became his team’s undisputed ace, then died at age 25 on Jan. 22 when he crashed his Jeep through a guardrail in the middle of the night on a windy mountain road in his native Dominican Republic. He was ejected from the vehicle.

The Giants will see memorials to Ventura at Kauffman Stadium, just as the A’s witnessed a wrenching tribute before Kansas City’s home opener last week at which his mother spoke. They will see patches on the Royals’ uniforms that read “ACE 30,” Ventura’s nickname and uniform number.

And their minds surely will go to 2014, when Ventura faced Jake Peavy in Games 2 and 6 of the World Series.

In Game 2, with the Royals down 1-0 in the Series, Ventura pitched into the sixth inning and held the Giants to two runs before Kansas City scored five in the bottom half to secure a 7-2 win.

Six nights later, the Royals returned to Kansas City down 3-2 in the Series, after Bumgarner pitched a Game 5 shutout, needing a win to force Game 7. He faced Peavy again. This time, it was no contest.

Ventura walked five but held the Giants scoreless on three hits for seven innings in a 10-0 Kansas City rout. The Royals scored seven runs in the second inning.

“His stuff was as electric as anybody I’ve ever faced,” Buster Posey said. “For somebody to be that young and on that stage, he had a lot of poise and confidence. He obviously pitched a great game.

“Anytime you’re up against elimination, you get to see people’s character come out. It seemed like he was confident in himself. We could all see he was a very confident person.”

The Giants saw Ventura’s stuff in Game 2. In Game 6, they witnessed his resolve.

“We knew we had our work cut out with this young kid, his power arm and the stuff that he had,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “We just wanted to try to keep it as close as we could and it got away from us early. Now it’s an uphill battle with this kid and the special stuff he had.

“I didn’t know him at all, but for him to pitch that well at his stage shows you his makeup and mental toughness to go along with his great stuff.”

Johnny Cueto did know Ventura well. They were teammates for three months on the Royals’ 2015 championship team, a wizened pitcher and a cocky kid from the same country, both chasing the same ring.

Cueto cannot forgot how he learned of Ventura’s death. He had just begun to digest news that onetime Cleveland infielder Andy Marte was killed in a car wreck in the Dominican at 33. The phone rang. On the other end was friend and former Reds teammate Edwin Encarnacion with word that Ventura died the same way, on the same day.

Encarnacion started the call by asking Cueto, “Have you heard the latest?”

“I was in a state of shock,” Cueto said through interpreter Erwin Higueros. “I remember him all the time. They’re always showing pictures of him. I remember him because he was a friend of mine and a teammate. It’s hard for me to believe that he passed away.”

They often talked, with Cueto giving advice. In the end, Cueto said, “Everybody does what they want to do.”

Speeding drivers and potholed roads create a toxic cocktail in the Dominican. Days before Ventura pitched in Game 6, his friend, rookie Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras, died in a car crash in the Dominican. Ventura faced the Giants with a tribute to Taveras that he wrote on his cap and now seems spooky in hindsight. It read, “RIP O.T. #18.”

The highway that claimed Ventura was a good road, relatively new, but dangerous in the darkness because of its mountainous turns. Ventura reportedly was speeding on a portion of the road with a 15-mph speed limit when he crashed. With his wild-child reputation, folks expected to hear he was impaired. Authorities found otherwise.

A mother lost her son. A country with so many baseball heroes lost a great one. A team lost a friend. Baseball lost a chance to see how good Ventura could have been had he pitched in more than 94 games.

“Just the short career that he had, you could see him progressing and maturing,” Bumgarner said. “He was really good for someone that age.”

Cueto was more circumspect, positing it was “hard to say” what Ventura’s career would have looked like in the end.

“People stay 15 years in the big leagues and never reach their potential,” Cueto said. “But to be honest, the kid, he had talent.”

Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman