There's not much more that can be said about Madison Bumgarner after what he did in the World Series, but let's just all agree that it is in the discussion for greatest pitching performance ever in a Fall Classic — right up there with two performances that involved the Twins.

The first was in 1965, when Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers pitched back-to-back complete game shutouts (the second in Game 7 on just two days of rest) to defeat the Twins in seven games. The second, of course, was Jack Morris' 10-inning masterpiece in Game 7 of the 1991 series (he was 2-0 with a 1.17 ERA in three series starts that year, not too shabby).

Bumgarner allowed just one run in 21 innings, and throwing five innings on two days of rest is the modern equivalent of what Koufax did. It's hard to declare one greater than the other, so let's just say all of those performances were magnificent.

However, we do still have one giant "what-if" about the ninth inning of Game 7: what if the Royals had sent Alex Gordon home from third base after his two-out hit that rolled all the way to the wall?

Plenty of folks online have insisted he would have been out from anywhere between 15 and 40 feet, but we're not so sure. Watch the highlight of the play and you'll see Gordon was between halfway and two-thirds of the way to third base by the time the ball was cleanly retrieved and was heading back toward the infield. Then shortstop Brandon Crawford, fielding the relay about 150 feet from home plate, had to scoop a short-hop throw right as Gordon was slowing down upon reaching third.

We would contend that, at the very least, it would have taken a decent throw from Crawford to get Gordon. That would have been after two Giants players — perhaps with nerves frayed — had already misplayed the ball. Is Gordon probably out? Sure, seven out of 10 times. Then again, opponents had 9 hits in 21 innings off Bumgarner in the World Series. We might have taken our chances on the relay being true vs. getting a hit off of a pitcher who was locked into that kind of zone.

We'll never know, of course, what might have happened. But at least some of us will always wonder.