NEW YORK _ They play baseball for six months and 162 games because it is most like life. It needs time to breathe, a tedious existence with good days, bad days and rainy days. It is not designed for nights like Wednesday, inside Citi Field, when two of the game's elite arms clashed in a one-game playoff to begin the National League postseason.
If a draft were held of all pitchers in baseball for the purposes of one game, they could have easily started it with Madison Bumgarner and Noah Syndergaard. For two hours, they traded brilliance. But, when one of the greatest postseason games in recent memory ended as a 3-0 Giants win over the Mets, Bumgarner stood alone on the mound while thousands of New Yorkers cursed his name.
The brusque right-hander is unmatched.
He pitched a shutout, nine innings of the finest October baseball imaginable. No Mets runner reached third base. Bumgarner has permitted one run in his last 47 2/3 innings of road postseason games. That is a 0.19 ERA.
Bumgarner, due to bat in the ninth, was not in the on-deck circle. He watched from the Giants dugout when Conor Gillaspie _ inserted at third base only because reliable Eduardo Nunez had a tight hamstring _ crushed a three-run homer to deep right. Yes, Bumgarner could finish his masterpiece.
This is the fifth year of the two wild-card system, and the last two nights have served as a referendum of its effectiveness. Just ask Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball.
"I'm a huge fan of the one-game wild-card games," Manfred said Wednesday. "I think it is very positive for the game in terms of getting our playoffs off to the most exciting start possible. Fans love knockout games, and I think it's important never to lose sight of the fact it's about what the fans like, at the end of the day."
Mets manager Terry Collins said he started his day with his normal routine, a newspaper and a cup of coffee, but it felt different.
"Ten people came up and said something they never have before because they're excited about tonight, and they should be," Collins said. "It's a great baseball matchup. This is two of the best pitchers in the game going head-to-head."
Syndergaard, 24, confounded San Francisco's meager lineup with an overpowering fastball, 93-mph sliders and 90-mph change-ups. Bumgarner, 27, fooled the Mets with his pinpoint accuracy from a deceptive arm slot.
It was just the second time in postseason history that both starters went seven innings without a run allowed in a winner-take-all game. Jack Morris and John Smoltz did it in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, the standard for all postseason pitching duels. This was reminiscent of a crisp night five Octobers ago at Citizens Bank Park, when Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter fought for nine innings.
Both Syndergaard and Bumgarner faced the minimum through three innings. Syndergaard no-hit San Francisco for the game's first five innings. Bumgarner used exactly seven pitches in each of his first three innings. New York, knowing it would see pitches to hit, attacked Bumgarner early in the count. Fall behind Bumgarner, tempt fate. They pushed him in a 28-pitch fourth inning and a 20-pitch fifth inning, but the gruff North Carolinian did not budge.
The closest either team came to scoring in the first seven innings was in the sixth, when Giants first baseman Brandon Belt clobbered a 98-mph sinker to deep center. Curtis Granderson tracked the ball, reached for it, and crashed into the blue wall. He caught a ball that, according to Major League Baseball's Statcast, landed as a hit 97 percent of the time.
The crowd, more than 44,000 on a perfect night, exhaled. But, when the bottom half of the inning commenced, Bumgarner was still there, and he would not relinquish the mound. Not in October.
