Span Ends Syndergaard’s No-Hit Bid in 6th in Wild-Card Game

O’s manager Buck Showalter has caught an earful ever since for going with an old baseball axiom that on the road don’t bring in your closer until you are AHEAD in the bottom half of the last inning. That’s going to take you real far.

“We went through such a rough time in the last month and, yes, we didn’t win the division, but I don’t think there is a guy in there that doesn’t believe in each other”, Gillaspie said.

It is two years later.

And yet that same theme, expressed with rare candor by Hudson, now looms over this postseason.

The Giants now advance to the National League Division Series against the Chicago Cubs, a team with the best regular season record. By any measure, the Cubs were baseball’s best team.

Nobody takes to October like Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants. He came to bat with one out in the 11th and blasted the first pitch he saw from Ubaldo Jimenez into the second deck in left. They have a dominant closer in Aroldis Chapman, a proven manager in Joe Maddon.

And it was two very different stories as closers were the story of the 2016 wild-card round.

Mets officials believe Yoenis Cespedes will opt out of his contract five days after the World Series, becoming a free agent.

The Giants travel to take on the Chicago Cubs. Bumgarner tossed a four-hit shutout to extend his postseason scoreless streak to 23 innings. “I like our chances”. So this was postseason baseball at its best, what is essentially a play-in game feeling like Game 7 on this night. The Giants are the underdogs in this series. However, postseason play is a whole new animal and the Giants have proven to be “even year” strong.

Bumgarner closed with a 1-2-3 ninth against the 3-4-5 hitters and smacked his glove in triumph when rookie T.J. Rivera flied out to end it.

Jake Peavy, who had been jettisoned from Boston at the trade deadline, in Game 1.

2014: Travis Ishikawa, in his second stint with the Giants, hit the pennant-clinching walk-off home run in Game 5 of the NLCS.

Bumgarner is 8-3 with three complete games and a 1.94 ERA over 97 1/3 innings in his 15 career postseason appearances. “I’m really proud of these guys, to handle all that adversity”, Syndergaard said after the game.

Possible AL Cy Young victor Rick Porcello faces off against Trevor Bauer, who displayed electric stuff this season, but was inconsistent after the All-Star break. Read game recaps in the San Francisco Chronicle, Post, Daily News, Times, Newsday, Record and at NJ.com and MLB.com. In two of the four years, the NL wild card victor won its next series while the AL victor did not; in another, both were immediately bounced; in 2014, the Giants and Royals went from the wild card game to the World Series. For comparison, Bumgarner’s aLI in Game 7 in 2014 was 2.01, naturally higher because there were no low-leverage early-inning at-bats, but also because of the nature of the situation. “I mean, complete-game shutout in an elimination”. Does any of that history matter? Bochy wouldn’t put a limit on him Wednesday afternoon, but the bullpen got moving in the eighth. San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner’s demeanor on the mound can flare with emotion-jawing with the umpire after a borderline call went against him, fist-pumping after snaring a line drive directed back at him-but such interruptions of his stoicism don’t begin until an hour before game time, at which point he’s sitting at his locker, fully dressed. “But it’s all about persevering, and this club has done a great job of that”.