But the Mets never got that far. Instead, they reminded us Wednesday night of their gumption, and of their deficits. For the first three innings, their hitters swung at anything, producing a succession of pop-ups, grounders and more pop-ups. I was tempted to write a quick memo: None of the religious holidays in October require that batters give up working longer counts against pitchers.

It did not help that the Mets’ slugger, Yoenis Cespedes, a man capable of hoisting the team on his back for weeks at a time, had misplaced his swing recently. He spent the evening wandering lost in a wilderness of pop-ups and checked-swing strikeouts.

It was a symptom of that Mets malaise, and of this season’s odd redemptions, that two rookies, T. J. Rivera and Ty Kelly, ended up with two of the team’s four hits against Bumgarner. Neither player had featured remotely in the Mets’ plans in the spring.

Noah Syndergaard, the 24-year-old golden-locked pitcher who goes by the nickname Thor, kept the Mets in the game. Save for the very occasional off-speed pitch, his fastballs and sinkers arrived in 98- to 100-miles-per-hour packages. Some Giants hitters waved feebly, others violently, and no one really touched him. (There was an exception: Curtis Granderson, the too-old-to-be-playing-center-field outfielder, bird-dogged a towering fly and crashed into the fence. He collapsed. A second passed and he raised his glove hand aloft, holding the ball.) Syndergaard recorded 10 strikeouts through seven innings and gave up two hits.

His season had been a rousing success, with 14 wins and 218 strikeouts in 183 innings. This playoff game was his coming-of-age punctuation. “He’s grown so much, even though he’s still very, very young,” Collins said of his young ace.

Unfortunately for the Mets, the other team had Bumgarner. He keeps his black cap pulled down tight over his head, with those cool, coal-burner eyes peering out of the shadows. He has a rocking chair motion, bringing his left arm out from behind his body in a slingshot. He has a sure fastball, and his cutter rolls across the batting zone like a wayward marble.