BASEBALL: Super Madison Bumgarner Leads Giants To World Series Championship Victory

For the third time in the last five years, the Giants are the champions of baseball. They beat the Royals by the score of 3-2 in Game 7 on Wednesday night (box score) thanks to their bullpen and the middle of the order. It was a crispy and exciting game after five blowouts in the first six games of the series. Let's review Game 7, quick hits style.

Hero: The Giants bullpen as a whole, but especially Madison Bumgarner. Like Jake Peavy in Game 6, Tim Hudson's outing was very short...


...and manager Bruce Bochy had to dip into his relief crew early. First out of the 'pen was Jeremy Affeldt, who cleaned up Hudson's mess in the second and threw scoreless third and fourth innings as well. It was the first time he recorded seven or more outs in a game since July 2012.

After Affeldt, Bochy went for the kill with Bumgarner, who started Game 5 on Sunday. Bumgarner was a little wild in the fifth inning but he quickly settled down and looked like his usually dominant self. Omar Infante welcomed him to the game with a leadoff single, then Bumgarner retired the next 14 men he faced and 15 of the next 16 to close out the game.

Five scoreless innings, one single, no walks, three strikeouts. Absurd. Bumgarner gave us one of the greatest postseason performances we'll ever see this October.

Hero II: A game like this doesn't deserve a goat, so let's have a second hero. It's the 4-5-6-7 hitters in the Giants lineup, who created all three runs. Mike Morse and Brandon Crawford drove in San Francisco's first two runs with sacrifice flies in the second, then Morse singled in their third run in the fourth.

Crawford chipped in the sacrifice fly, but Pablo Sandoval, Hunter Pence and Brandon Belt did all the heavy lifting with multiple hits each. Morse had his single and the sac fly. Those 4-5-6-7 hitters went a combined 8-for-14 (.571) with a hit-by-pitch, three runs scored and three runs driven in. The rest of the Giants lineup went 0-for-18 with Crawford's sac fly.

Turning point: Morse's little broken bat bloop to right field to score the team's third run. Kelvin Herrera busted him inside with a two-strike fastball, but Morse was able to fight it off the other way. I wouldn't call it the prettiest piece of hitting but it got the job done. It was Morse's brute strength against Herrera's high-octane fastball. With Bumgarner looming and the Giants taking the lead, the Royals suddenly had a very big hill to climb.

It was over when: Bumgarner walked through that bullpen gate to start the fifth inning. I mean, yeah, it was a one-run game and Alex Gordon was standing on third base when the game ended thanks to a brutal outfield error, but Bumgarner slammed the door with authority to preserve the win.