A huge, strange win for the Mets in a game in which a new superhero emerged. Robert Gsellman — pronounced “Gazelle Man” — leapt out of the pages and into Mets lore.
The Mets broke out early when Jose Reyes kept turning back the clock. He led off the game with a five-pitch walk and Asdrubal Cabrera followed with a line single. After Yoenis Cespedes popped up, Reyes stole third, but that didn’t really matter as Wilmer Flores drilled a home run into the fifth row of the left field grandstand. Jon Niese took the mound staked to a 3-0 lead and got exactly one out. Two walks and a single by Brandon Moss sandwiched around a Stephen Piscotty line out gave one run back. Niese aggravated his sore knee running to back up the play at the plate and left the game. The call went out to Gazelle Man!
Gsellman threw his first major league pitch, which Yadier Molina immediately hit into the left-center gap for a game-tying double. Welcome to the Big Leagues, kid. The Mets, though, were able to give him a lead to work with right away. In the second, Travis d’Arnaud singled with one out. Gsellman bunted him over to second and Reyes knocked him home with a base hit and took second on a bad throw by Tommy Pham in left field. That would prove important as Cabrera doubled and the Mets led it 5-3. In the fourth, the resurgent Justin Ruggiano led off with a long home run to dead center. For his part, Gsellman did settle in nicely, if a little wobbly. In three and two-thirds innings of long relief, he allowed two hits, walked three, struck out two and allowed no runs: his ERA is 0.00, but his WHIP is an unsightly 1.36.
Josh Smoker replaced Gsellman and had a couple of shaky innings of his own, but the only real blemish on his record was a bomb of a homer by Randal Grichuk in the sixth, closing the gap to 6-4. The Mets nearly put the game away in the seventh, when Cabrera hit another double with one out and was balked to third. Cespedes was intentionally walked and Terry Collins — playing that lefty-righty game for which we love him so — sent up James Loney to hit for Flores against Alex Reyes. Except that with Ruggiano in the game, the only righty on the bench was backup catcher Rene Rivera, so Loney had to hit against a career Met-killer, lefty Zach Duke. Of course, Loney hit into a double play on Duke’s second pitch. Addison Reed came on to pitch the eighth and he, too, tiptoed through the raindrops, surrendering hits to pinch-hitter Jeremy Hazelbaker and Piscotty before getting the dangerous Matt Carpenter on a fly ball to center. The Mets added a run in the ninth when Reyes singled, went to second on a wild pitch, moved to third on a two-out infield single by Cespedes — who was not intentionally walked, for some unfathomable reason — and scored on a breathless single to left by Loney. Jeurys Familia pitched a flawless bottom of the ninth and the Mets had an absolutely crucial win in the books to shave a game off the Cards’ lead in the Wild Card race.
Jacob deGrom goes against Carlos Martinez tomorrow as the Mets will try to get within two and a-half.
Play of the game: Cabrera robbing Pheralta of a run scoring single in the 3rd inning with a diving stop behind 2nd base and getting an inning ending force play while it was still a 5-3 game.
Ruggiano hit it 461 ft to dead center. Wow, what a blast! So, who do you keep Lagares or Ruggiano? And then Bruce, Cespedes (hopefully), Conforto, Nimmo, Granderson…
Gsellman: live arm…decent stuff… too many Fat Pitches. Needs to work on Change Up. Has the tools to be a Good Pitcher.
Huge win. And when you consider the circumstances — Niese starting, and failing miserably — absolutely crucial.
Going into series, I felt Mets at minimum had to take 2 of 3. Anything less would be yet another failed test, and worse: lost ground and lost time.
On Gsellman, maybe it’s not fair or accurate, but following his progress my hope is that he can have a Dillon Gee-type career. A back-end guy, maybe. It’s not nothing! I always liked Gee, before the injuries sliced into his already-thin margins.
Yoenis made a nice catch out there, too.
Earlier I had half hoped that Niese would get bombed in his latest Mets debut, thinking that a decent start by Jonathan would almost certainly doom the team to five more starts. Apparently his first start wasn’t quite bad enough; I suppose I should credit Niese with making the most-least of his opportunity this time, and making such fast work of it that there actually was a lot of game left when he departed. Not trying to be mean to Niese, but at this point he holds no more surprises for us; and I wanted to see Gsellman.
Gsellman has a chance to be somewhat better than Gee, I believe. What I would hope for from him, assuming the increased velocity he is said to show occasionally is real, would be more variety in pitch location; in English, mix in some high fastballs. Having a sinking fastball is a good thing; mixing it up a bit is another good thing.
A solid win with contibutions from a bunch of players you would not have expected on the 2016 roster.
Reyes just turned 33 yoa but he still is fast enough to be a catalyst and impact the game. He has scored 18 runs in 26 games but remember this is Reyes’ April not August. He has looked good though.
Cespedes said he will honor his 3 year committment in the Record. The Mets should add another year with the same terms, with a significant raise over those three years. Walt Alston II.
A few years back, Brian, Joe Vasile and myself saw Gsellman pitch. Brian asked “who is this guy?” and Joe said,” never mind that, how do you pronounce his last name?” Spoken like a true sportscaster. I am happy he made it to the show and got a win.
JDG owes us a dominating start after the clunker he put up last time out against the Giants. A shutout tonight and all is forgiven!
It’s amazing to me how poor the Cardinals have been at home this year. Six games under .500 at home and if the season ended today they’d make the playoffs. I wonder what the record is for worst home record in a playoff year? The ’73 Mets were five games over .500 at home.