Dillon Gee is pitching for his job

The company line coming from Flushing is that Dillon Gee’s job is not in jeopardy. Don’t believe that.

Gee, who turned 29 on Tuesday, is absolutely pitching for his job, whether it’s to protect his current role with the Mets or build a strong case for the Texas Rangers or somebody else to stick him in their rotation.

Sandy Alderson and his team spent all off-season trying to find a trade partner for Gee, and did little to hide it. Unfortunately for both team and pitcher, the market for a mediocre righty was limited and the return wasn’t enough for Alderson to pull the trigger.

Gee was a Met by default. And he was a good trooper, telling the New York Post in early March how he wanted to be a part of the Mets as much as he wanted to be a starter.

“I just want to pitch. I like it here and I think they are going to have a great year and to be a part of it would be cool, because I want to be part of a winning team here. At the same time, I want to be a starter, too, and if that happens elsewhere I will be happy there, too,” he said.

Gee was the fifth starter when the team broke camp, but the young competition, Rafael Montero, also made the major league team. Montero was shifted into the bullpen to get experience as much as stabilizing the relief corps. The position battle was over, except maybe it wasn’t.

Gee’s numbers have been fairly mundane, typical for a back of the rotation pitcher. Through four games his ERA sits at 4.26 and WHIP at 1.184, plenty fine for the last guy to take the ball. He has given up a career high 9.6 hits per nine innings and his strikeouts per nine innings are down a full strikeout from the last two years, but he’s also walking a very uncharacteristically low 1.1 batters per nine innings. It’s also evaluating a player on a very small sample size.

But it does reveal something very important.

For weeks Gee towed the company line and did what was asked of him. But two weeks ago, the pitcher forced a meeting with his skipper. Admitting his coping skill was to bottle issues up, he admitted to Terry Collins how he’s been frustrated through the last six months as his name frequently popped up in trade rumors and the team bounced him between the starting rotation and bullpen. He watched Montero moved back to Triple-A under the belief he’d return from last night’s Marlins game to take Gee’s job.

Something happened at that meeting. Maybe it was Collins instilling confidence in his pitcher he would continue to be a part of the best team in baseball, or maybe it was confidence in himself wherever he ended up and using a grudge against New York to fuel his resurgence.

Either way, the difference is noticeable. Gee couldn’t pitch his way out of the sixth inning in the first two starts and sported a 7.59 ERA. In the two starts since, he’s pitched into the seventh and eighth innings, respectively, and to a combined 1.84 ERA. Coincidentally, he pitched both well and poorly to the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins. The amount of baserunners allowed was relatively unchanged, but the dominant Gee is inducing substantially more ground balls – 23 in first two games and 30 in second two games – and flyballs – 11 in first two games and 20 in second two games.

Gee has never been a steady source of ground balls. His 1.65 ground ball to fly ball ratio and 2.33 ground out to air out ratio are double his career average.

The question is, what’s driving him to succeed?