The Mets bullpen has been erratic, to say the least, so far this season. One reliever is making a case as a valuable setup man, and that would be right-hander Robert Gsellman. His numbers so far are quite good. Gsellman has been a workhorse, appearing in 32 games, pitching 42 innings and posting a 5-1 record. He has a 2.79 ERA, his WHIP is 1.17, and hitters are batting only .208 against him.
Looking into those numbers, we find Gsellman starting off well, in the first month he had a 1.80 ERA with no homers given up. May was a different story, his ERA for the month was 4.58 with three home runs against him as the Mets season was going downhill. The good news is, Gsellman has turned things around and he is having a tremendous June so far.
This month Gsellman has six appearances, with 7.1 IP. He has struck out 10, and walked only two batters. Hitters are batting a miniscule .042 against him this month. He has yet to give up a homer in June, in fact he hasn’t even given up any runs at all, resulting in an ERA of 0.00 this month.
The Mets have had a hard time winning lately, but the last three times Gsellman relieved, the team won. Gsellman pitched two innings against the Yanks on June 10 as the Mets salvaged a win, and he earned a hold. He got another hold his next time out, June 16 against the D-backs, then he picked up a save in the dramatic Sunday win over Arizona as he worked around the Dominick Smith error in the ninth.
Gsellman made his MLB debut in 2016 after the Mets called him up mid-season. He pitched in eight games that wild card season, starting seven of them and posting a fine 2.42 ERA. Gsellman, like the Mets, had a major regression in 2017, when his ERA ballooned to 5.19. He pitched in 25 games that year, 22 of them starts.
Gsellman has been used exclusively in the bullpen this year. He has been averaging 94 MPH on his fastball, striking out slightly less than a batter an inning. That’s not overpowering, but it gets the job done. Gsellman gets some good sinking action on his fastball when he is right.
The Mets have had far too many games this year where the starting pitching has been excellent but the bullpen has given the game away. There may be hope for the relief corps, with Jeurys Familia now returned from the DL, with Anthony Swarzak showing some life, with the possible return of Seth Lugo to the bullpen when Noah Syndergaard is activated, and of course with Gsellman hopefully keeping up his stellar form of June. If everything falls into place, the relief corps could return to being a strong point of this team.