Madison Bumgarner Not Expected to Return Until After All-Star Break

By Djack

What all Giants fans feared has now become a reality, MadBum will miss the rest of the first half of the season and won't be returning till post all-star break. That means instead of running out a pitcher that almost guarantees your squad a win every 5th game, you have a pitcher that's not even close to his caliber running out there. The San Francisco Giants have struggled mightily already this season, without MadBum for basically half the season it's not going to make it any easier to compete in the much improved NL West. San Fran is in a lot of trouble and fans should be fearing the reality that they're most likely not going to make the playoffs this season.

The Giants have been struggling mightily ever since the all-star break last year, so it's no surprise that it has carried over into this season with the lack of acquisitions they made this offseason. The pitching staff has under performed, Jeff Samardzija is garbage, Matt Moore is so inconsistent, and Matt Cain has pitched better this year, but needs to maintain this level of performance. If the pitching staff can't keep the opposing team's offense under control, then the Giants have no shot since their offense is decent at best. The bullpen continues to struggle, Melancon was a nice addition, other than that the bullpen is still very weak. Clearly, this team has a lot more issues than MadBum. Although, every 5th day he'd help cover up those blemishes and now he can't.

San Francisco can't get too mad at Bumgarner, the guy has done more for that franchise than anyone else has except for maybe Buster Posey. He gets paid at a huge discount and he's willing to put his arm on the line for this team in any big game pushing himself to new heights to lead his team to championships. That's still no excuse for him possibly sabotaging the San Francisco Giants season because of his own personal desires. Leave the extreme sports for the offseason, right now he's working, and his job is to play baseball, not bullshit. Hopefully he learned his lesson and will now have to watch his team fall way back in the playoff race without him availiable for the majority of the season. Hope it was worth it MadBum.