New York Mets - San Francisco Giants

NL Wild Card Game between the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets features Madison Bumgarner vs. Noah Syndergaard, at Citi Field.  Interesting enough, the pundits have the Giants favorites to win this game, as the odds are in favor of Bumgarner (-1.5 Runs) at 2.70 and 1.83 in the Money Line (ML).  The winner advances to the NL Division Series against the overrated Chicago Cubs. The Mets finished with the same regular-season record as the Giants, at 87-75, but earned the home-field advantage for this game by virtue of a 4-3 record in the 7 games the clubs played against each other.  New York is sending its ace Syndergaard to the mound, who throws 100 mph with a 91-mph slider. He is coming off a 7-day rest [extremely important], and his overall record is 14-9 with solid 2.60 ERA, 218 strikeouts in 183 2/3 innings. Syndergaard also has 1 postseason under his belt, last October, with a victory in Game 3 vs. the Royals in the 2015 World Series.  New York's ace pitched brilliantly 8 innings against the Giants on August 21 [in San Francisco], winning the game 2-0.  Madison Bumgarner is 1 of the best postseason pitchers in the history of the game. He's also coming off a solid 15-9 season with a 2.74 ERA.  In his last game at home against New York, Bumgarner picked up the win 10-7, but he pitched only 5 innings, and allowed 6 hits, 4 runs, on 4 errors. [Both pitchers are front-runners for NL CY Young Award]. The New York Mets play at home in front of a huge home crowd [The crowd rocks Queens].  With that, I pick the underdog NY Mets with spread of (+1.5 R); The odds of 1.50 for that betting option enable a "safety net".

UPDATE October 06, 2016 - FINAL Result: New York Mets 0-3 San Francisco Giants. Madison Bumgarner delivered a shutout in a 3-0 blanking of the Mets at Citi Field.  This is his second consecutive Wild Card shutout, extending his postseason scoreless-innings streak to 23.  Bumgarner sent the Giants to the NL Div. Series, where they will face the Cubs beginning Friday in Chicago.  Noah Syndergaard, finished with 10 strikeouts in 7 shutout innings, but it was not enough for the Mets. Conor Gillaspie hit a 3-run homer off Mets closer Jeurys Familia in the 9th inning that put the Giants ahead 3-0, destroying a closer, who had allowed just 1 home run the entire regular season(?!?).  Just to remind the stats - when the game is going into the 9th inning with a tie score [in this case, 0-0], over 93% of the time the closers keep it that way, and send the game into extra innings. Therefore, it was stunning to watch the complete meltdown of Familia in the 9th [the best closer in baseball this year with over 50 saves!!?!].  "It wasn't meant to be" for the Mets - the injuries played their part as well - the absence of Matt Harvey, Jonathon Niese, Zack Wheeler, David Wright (all 4 in the 60-day DL), Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Matt Reynolds (all 3 not on the active Playoff roster), was way too much to overcome vs. the experienced Giants team.