Thor-Bumgarner was best elimination game duel

Stuff. Pedigree. Setting. Stakes. Whichever way you slice it, Wednesday’s National League Wild Card Game featured one of the most exciting pitching matchups we’ve ever seen in a winner-take-all affair, with Madison Bumgarner opposing Noah Syndergaard with a spot in the National League Division Series on the line.

But maybe the most exhilarating part of what evolved into a tension-filled night at Citi Field was that it unraveled almost exactly the way we expected it to. You had Bumgarner, the ace of the Giants and one of the best postseason pitchers of all time, riding the wave of his best season to date. And you had Syndergaard, with a fastball/slider combination so unconscionable it prompted opponents, after they beat him, to call it “some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen.”

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So nobody was exactly shocked when, eight innings and 60 batters into play, zeros still ruled the scoreboard. Bumgarner ended up adding to his October legend with a suffocating four-hit shutout, while Syndergaard took a no-hitter into the sixth and finished with 10 strikeouts in seven scoreless innings. This was the game we predicted, the game we wanted, and the game we got.

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In this light, we attempted to place Wednesday night’s game historically in terms of matchups that lived up to their enormous, on-paper hype. First we ranked every winner-take-all elimination game pitching matchup in the Wild Card era by combined bWAR to get the list of games that looked like great matchups going in. Then we ranked those by combined Game Score, the Bill James metric that attempts to summarize a pitcher’s performance in one number.

Syndergaard and Bumgarner combined to pitch to a 10.3 bWAR this year, making it the ninth-best matchup in our rankings going in. Then Bumgarner registered a near-elite 83 game score, and Syndergaard notched an impressive 80. Combined, that made Wednesday’s game the best winner-take-out pitching matchup in the Wild Card era. For context, their combined 163 game scores even topped the 153 mark set by John Smoltz and Jack Morris in their legendary 1991 World Series Game 7 duel.

So no, your eyes weren’t deceiving you. Wednesday’s duel was the best in recent memory. But which games did it top? When have we seen such a battle before? Get ready, because these matchups are pretty good.

1. Bumgarner (Giants) vs. Syndergaard (Mets) 2015 NL Wild Card Game Combined WAR: 10.3 Combined Game Score: 163

Only three of the other 18 pitchers on this list pitched to a game score of 80 or better (50 is average) in their starts. Both Bumgarner (Game score of 83) and Syndergaard (Game score 80) did that Wednesday. They combined to allow 11 baserunners and strike out 16, while Bumgarner extended his postseason scoreless-inning streak to 23. He would have been pinch-hit for in the eighth, had Conor Gillaspie not hit his game-winning …

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