Mets get a boost with DL returnees but uncertainty remains

Before the season started, pretty much every Mets fan considered this team to be a 90-win or better squad. Flash forward to June 11 and the team enters the day at 27-33. So, yeah, it’s been a major disappointment. But the last four days have been an example of what everyone was expecting coming into the season. Yes, the quality of the two teams hasn’t been great. But the Mets went on the road, first to Texas and now in Atlanta, and have won three of four games. Here are the scores:

4-3 (W)
3-2 (L)
6-1 (W)
8-1 (W)

They’ve outscored their opponents, 20-8, in this brief stretch. And the key thing is that the starting pitching is finally holding up its end of the bargain. Starting with the first game of the stretch, Zack Wheeler went seven innings, Matt Harvey went five, Robert Gsellman got two outs in the seventh and Steven Matz went seven.

In these four starts, the SP have combined for 25.2 IP and 2 ER. That’s a 0.70 ERA.

The relief corps is still shaky. The pen is struggling to replace two guys counted on to be among their top four relievers, including its closer. But its usage has improved in the last week or so and if the SP can consistently go six or more innings, a lot of the stress imposed on the pen the first two months of the season will lighten up considerably.

Despite leading the team in victories – and having a 2.24 ERA in his last four starts – Gsellman seems headed to the bullpen. While that will be a welcome addition to the pen, it’s hard not to feel sorry for a guy who seems to have finally fixed what ailed him earlier in the year. But the club is concerned how Seth Lugo’s elbow will hold up in a relief role so Gsellman gets the short end of the stick. Perhaps a move to the bullpen for Wheeler would allow him to stay under his preseason innings goal. Or perhaps Harvey, who has the highest ERA, FIP and WHIP of the four healthy starters, should be the one to become a reliever. But that’s not the plan.

All offseason, Matt Cerrone at MetsBlog talked about the Mets utilizing Lugo as a Swiss army knife out of the pen, similar to how the Indians used Andrew Miller after acquiring him down the stretch in 2016. The Mets may have that weapon now, but it will be Gsellman rather than Lugo. We caught a brief glimpse of this earlier this season, when Gsellman made two relief appearances in mid-May, including one where he delivered two scoreless innings.

It’s hard not to be intrigued about having a pitcher who could be used twice a week and two or three innings at a time out of the pen. If the bullpen has to cover 18 innings in a week and one guy can handle six of those without being overworked, it makes the math so much easier for the remaining six relievers. Perhaps we could even advance to a point where we didn’t consistently have relievers having appeared in three out of the last four or four out of the last five days. A relief pitcher who hasn’t pitched in three days is a good thing.

Unfortunately, it’s a legitimate question if Terry Collins is the right man to maximize Gsellman in the bullpen. Can he use him for more multi-inning appearances than virtually any reliever he’s had at his disposal since he became the Mets’ manager in 2011? Or will the temptation to use him as the eighth inning guy be too much to ignore? And what happens if one of the starters go down? If we’ve learned one thing these past few years, it’s that we can never count on the starters to avoid injury.

So, the situation is fluid, a work in progress. But when you had designs on a division title and instead find yourself six games under .500 and 10.5 games out of the lead, the last thing you should be doing is resisting change and insisting on business as normal.

Everyone feels that the Mets have a talented club. And now with three guys returning from the DL who’ve missed large chunks of the year, we’ll finally get to see a group closer to what we hoped to see back in March. And perhaps that means games where the starter goes seven innings and the offense delivers 14 runs in a doubleheader.

If so, then management will just have to straighten out the bullpen and the infield defense. Gsellman has the chance to help greatly in the former. And a key part of the solution to the latter is just a phone call away.