Posted By Jeff Fletcher on September 9, 2009 10:24 am

I know many of you who read my descriptions during last night’s live chat, or who read my story at FanHouse, are going to be upset that I was so tough on young Mr. Bumgarner in his debut. First, I understand perfectly that it’s tough to pitch in the majors, and that it’s especially tough to do when you are 20 years old, and that Bumgarner still gave the Giants exactly what they needed and that he could easily have won that game.

However, if Bumgarner is supposed to be a franchise type pitcher, a guy to sidle right up against Lincecum and Cain forming the Giants’ Big Three for the next five or six years, I expected to see a little more, you know, stuff.

But don’t take my word for it. And don’t take the word of the scouts who I quoted. The Brooks Baseball web site has detailed pitch information for every pitcher, including last night’s game for Bumgarner. (Before you look at it, realize that there are some inherent problems with this data, namely that the people who are entering it may not be identifying the pitches properly.) Here are a few things that I noticed.

• His fastball averaged only 88.1 mph. The issue there was well-chronicled last night.
• He threw only 64.6 percent of them for strikes. Just for comparison sake, in Matt Cain’s last start, he threw 72.3 percent of his fastballs for strikes.
• As for his command (where in the strike zone the pitches were), take a look at this chart. It shows where all of Bumgarner’s pitches landed, grouped by type. The green dots are his fastballs. They are all over the strike zone, including a nice chunk of them right in the middle.
• Bumgarner’s fastballs had an average movement of about 4 inches horizontally and 8 inches vertically. Cain, in his last start, had 7 inches horizontally and 10 inches vertically. Oh, and Cain’s fastball also averaged 94.5 mph.
• How bout a comparison to old friend Kevin Correia, who shared the mound with Bumgarner? His fastball was an average of 90.2 mph, and 66.7 percent for strikes. The movement was 5 inches by 7.5 inches.
• The break on Bumgarner’s slider was 2 inches by 2 inches, and he got zero swing-and-misses on it.

Add it all up, and Bumgarner’s stuff — forget the results, his stuff — looks a lot more like Kevin Correia than Matt Cain, and frankly not as good as Correia.

True, this is all just one start, so it’s not really fair to place too much emphasis on it. And none of this really matters for the Giants until next year anyway. Theoretically, if Lincecum’s back is healing as quickly as they say, Bumgarner won’t throw another meaningful pitch for the Giants this year.