D-backs decide to end Bumgarner's season

PHOENIX -- The D-backs closed out the home part of their schedule Sunday afternoon as they fell, 3-2, to the Giants, but the news of the day came before the game started when Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said veteran left-hander Madison Bumgarner would not pitch again this year.

Bumgarner, 33, is healthy, Lovullo said, but there were a pair of reasons the team elected not to have him make one more start this year.

The first is they want to continue to get looks at some of their young pitchers like lefty Tommy Henry and righty Drey Jameson, who tossed 5 1/3 scoreless innings Sunday against the Giants.

"I would say the majority of it is that we want to see some different arms, some younger arms," Lovullo said. "On top of that, Bum has had a full season."

Bumgarner has made 30 starts this year, throwing 158 2/3 innings. It started out well and then he hit a rough patch, and for the majority of the rest of the season, he was constantly working and searching for a way to get back on track.

In what now apparently was his final outing of the season, he allowed just one run and one hit over six innings against the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

Bumgarner's positive performance in that game was another reason why Lovullo chose to not have him start again.

"I made the decision that he had an unbelievable start in his last start and I just felt like let’s end the year on that and get after a healthy offseason," Lovullo said. "Bum has worked very hard this year, extremely hard, to get things pushed in the right direction and I felt like this was a really good way to say move off into the offseason with that last start behind him and keep moving forward."

Bumgarner signed a five-year, $85 million free-agent deal prior to the 2020 season and is still owed $23 million next year and $14 million in 2024.

So far during his three years in Arizona, he is 15-29 with a 4.98 ERA in 65 starts.

The focus over the past few seasons, it seems, has been to find a way to get Bumgarner back to the form he had when he was winning World Series games with the Giants, but Lovullo wants to hit a reset on that.

"[His] stuff grades out in a fairly similar way to when he was winning world championships in San Francisco," Lovullo said. "But I am going to work hard and I want everyone else to work hard at not going backwards and say what he used to be, but I’m going to really work hard and focus on what he can become.

"This will be Act II of his career. The Arizona Diamondbacks are here and supporting him and teaching him everything we can. He’s accepting that. We’re going to push through this with Bum. We’re going to get that act right. That’s our job. It wasn’t a good year. We know that. In talking to him, some adjustments need to be made. He will make those quality adjustments. He wants to have a good year next year and help us win baseball games."

Over the past week, Lovullo and the front office have had end-of-the-year meetings with players and it was during Bumgarner's that Lovullo delivered the news about him being done for the year.

While he wanted to keep most of their conversation confidential, Lovullo did share some of what the two discussed.

"Just about how important he is to this rotation and what it means for him to go out every fifth day and help us win baseball games," Lovullo said. "There’s some minutia in there that we were talking about. He and [pitching coach Brent Strom] are always going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out what to do and how to get it done. Bum’s got a long offseason. He’s going to go to work. He’s going to take some time off and then he’s going to pick up a baseball and start to get to work with an eye on 2023 and helping us win."