Bumgarner is the last ace standing

— -- ST. LOUIS - He's the Last Ace Standing.

He is doing what Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, David Price, Jon Lester, Stephen Strasburg, Jered Weaver and Adam Wainwright couldn't do in a crazy October that has been hazardous to the ERAs and reputations of aces everywhere.

Madison Bumgarner says he has no idea what mysterious postseason curse may be taking its toll on all those other guys. But as he proved again Saturday night, with 7 2/3 dominating shutout innings against a team that just beat Cy Kershaw twice, that curse sure hasn't afflicted him.

Bumgarner did Saturday what true aces get paid to do in October. He kept hanging those zeroes on the Busch Stadium scoreboard, one after another after another.

By the time Bumgarner was through, he'd made some very cool history. More on that later. But more importantly, he'd pitched the San Francisco Giants to a 3-0 win over Wainwright and Kershaw's good friends, the St. Louis Cardinals, in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series.

"He's more impressive when he hits a home run, and he didn't do that," quipped Bumgarner's first baseman, Brandon Belt. "But coming in here, playing against a team like this, that knows how to win in the playoffs, to shut them down like that, it's pretty amazing to me."

Actually, it may well be amazing to much of the rest of the planet, too. But if it is, that says more about the rest of the planet than it says about Bumgarner.

You'd have thought his 18 wins, his sub-3.00 ERA, his 219 punchouts, the two grand slams he whomped and those pitcher-of-the-month awards he won in two different months this season would have elevated this guy's profile. But if that didn't do it, then let's hope his awesome October (in which he now has an 0.76 ERA after three starts) has finally propelled him into the ranks of the greatest pitchers on earth.

And who, you ask, is No. 1 if he's not? Belt wasn't about to nominate anyone as being better than his favorite ace.

"I guess he is," Belt said of Bumgarner. "He's No. 1 and 2."

Well, one thing's for sure: If Kershaw and Wainwright were No. 1 and 2 before this postseason began, Bumgarner has outpitched both of them this month. And not just by a small margin. By an LSU-over-Sam Houston kind of margin.

Kershaw gave up 11 runs in two painful losses to the team Bumgarner overmatched Saturday night. So the judges didn't have to deliberate long to award Bumgarner a unanimous October decision over him.

And in their Game 1 NLCS duel Saturday, Wainwright couldn't get through the fifth inning for the second straight start -- in an October in which he's allowed 21 baserunners and nine runs in nine frustrating innings -- while Bumgarner was spinning nothing but shutout innings for three dazzling hours.

Asked afterward whether he could explain why he's been so good while so many other aces have scuffled, the best theory Bumgarner could offer was: "It's a crazy game. Anything can happen. ... And that's why we play the game."

OK, got that? But Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt had a better theory.

"It's a funny thing about that 'ace' stuff," Affeldt said. "He just gets locked in. But when you look at other guys, at a guy like Wainwright, he's thrown a whole lot of innings. And no matter who you are, you're not a robot. ... But 'Bum' has just seemed to elevate himself, as well as anyone I've seen, in the playoffs, and almost gets better as the playoffs get going."

In the first of those postseason starts, back in the 2010 NLDS, he gave up two runs in six innings in Atlanta. He hasn't allowed a single run on the road since. That takes in a two-inning relief appearance in Philadelphia in 2010, eight shutout innings in Game 4 of the World Series that year, his four-hit complete-game shutout in this year's NL wild-card game in Pittsburgh and now his latest masterpiece, Saturday in St. Louis.

That comes to 26 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings on the road in the postseason -- the longest streak in major league history. The only other starting pitchers who ever even made it to 20 or more were men who began those streaks more than 90 years ago. That would be Christy Mathewson (21 shutout innings from 1905-11) and Art Nehf (23, from 1921-24). Not that any of that particularly overwhelmed the unflappable  Bumgarner.

"You know, that's pretty cool, obviously, to have any kind of record," Bumgarner said. "But there are stats for everything nowadays. So you know, this just happened to work out that way for whatever reason. Happen to have a little bit of extra good luck on the road."

Yeah, that must be it. The guy just gets lucky on the nights he pitches. The other team always forgets to score.

They did, after all, score 11 runs in the seventh inning alone in Kershaw's two starts against them. And sure enough, they arose in the seventh inning of this game to get back-to-back singles from Jon Jay and Yadier Molina with one out.

So quickly, Busch Stadium rocked back to life. And almost as quickly, Bumgarner put it back to sleep. But not without adventure.

First, he got Kolten Wong to tap what looked like a routine chopper to Belt -- except that Belt had trouble extricating it from his glove, was late flipping it to Bumgarner and, when Bumgarner spun to tag Wong, he ended up hip-checking Wong halfway to Kansas City.

"That was good, man," Affeldt deadpanned. "I'm just glad he lowered his right shoulder and not his left, so he kept that safe. But that's 'Bum.' He just kind of flies by the seat of his pants out there a little bit."

Then, five pitches after that, Bumgarner was getting ready to deliver a 2-2 pitch to Tony Cruz when he abruptly decided to step off the mound after appearing to start his delivery. It could easily have been ruled a run-scoring balk. But when you're on the kind of roll Bumgarner is on, of course the only people calling a balk were sitting in the Cardinals' dugout.

So naturally, on the next pitch, he blew a 92 mph fastball past Cruz for an inning-ending strikeout. Another zero went up there on the scoreboard. And Bumgarner continued his amazing run at the front of the parade of October aces.

"I think it's an honor to watch a guy like this," said Affeldt, who has seen every one of Bumgarner's postseason trips to the mound. "I think I'm going to look back in a few years, when I'm in my rocking chair, drinking an iced tea, and I'm watching these guys play. And I'm going to probably say that I was very honored to play with a Madison Bumgarner."

But meanwhile, the rest of us have a whole lot of postseason baseball to watch this October. And one thing we've learned is that, no matter who else heads out there to pitch those games, they'll have a tough time outpitching the Last Ace Standing.