HAIR FORCE ONE
DeGrom clone Gsellman guides Mets to within single game of wild card
Robert Gsellman, a Jacob deGrom (inset) doppelganger, looked like he is ready to step in for the struggling Mets ace, giving up just one run in six innings Saturday in a 3-1 win over the Nationals, pulling the Mets within one game of the Cardinals for the last NL wild-card spot. Sp rtsS
This is exactly how the Mets drew it up. Get into a pennant race in September and send Robert Gsellman to the mound in an important game.
Gsellman and negative MRI exams and pray for rain.
“We don’t want to keep belaboring the injury issue, but we’ve asked a lot of some young players, and they have stepped up,” manager Terry Collins said. “If you would have told me in April [the Mets would win with the team fielded Saturday, complete with four rookie pitchers], I’d tell you you’re out of your mind.”
And if you told Collins two guys who were mired in horrid slumps only family members could forgive would deliver the key hits, he would have called Sigmund Freud pronto.
So while Gsellman gave the Mets six solid innings to win for the first time as a starter, Curtis Granderson ended an 0-of-22 sludge with runners in scoring position while James Loney cracked an RBI double, his first extra-base hit since Aug. 1, and the Mets dumped the Nationals, 3-1, Saturday at Citi Field to move within one game of the Cardinals for the second NL wild-card spot.
“It means a lot. It’s fun to be part of this,” said Gsellman (2-1), who in his third major league game and second start, allowed six hits and one earned run, walked three and struck out four, consistently making big pitches when needed.
Maybe his biggest pitches came in the very first inning. The Nationals loaded the bases and had one out. But Gsellman survived, allowing just one run on a sac fly to center by Anthony Rendon. That was huge.
“Definitely,” said Gsellman, 23. “Starting a game with bases loaded, one out, the game can change like that. I thought I did well to get out of it with one run.”
And Gsellman had another big inning in the sixth, surviving a two-on, none-out fuss — which became second and third with one out.
“It was definitely big to get out of that, two runners on with nobody out,” Gsellman said. “I thought I did good.”
So did Collins. For the whole night.
“It’s a tribute to his makeup, a tribute to certainly how he’s applied himself,” Collins said. “Tonight, that’s about as good a sinker as I’ve seen from anybody. But I thought the first inning was the key. Limiting the damage in the first inning I thought that was the big inning for him.”
Getting that effort was important for the Mets, whose rotation resides in the dictionary somewhere between “chaotic clump” and “injured mess.”
Four relievers worked after Gsellman with Jeurys Familia handling the ninth for his 45th save. Seven guys pitched for the Nationals, and not even manager Dusty Baker could name them all.
Among the many ugly numbers rearing heads around the Mets — beyond “Players Hurt Bad” — is the total for hitting with runners in scoring position. The Mets were last in all the MLB world at .214. Among the chief offenders in that area has been Granderson, who was .116 (10-of-86) overall with runners in scoring position. All that became moot with one thirdinning swing.
With two outs and men on second and third, Yoenis Cespedes was walked intentionally after watching two pitches that finished in a neighboring county. Granderson, batting cleanup for the second time — both within a week — drilled a firstpitch breaking ball from Nationals starter Tanner Roark (14-8) for a single to right and the Mets led 2-1, their first lead in September.
“Any time you can get runs to come across is a good thing, especially with the pitchers pitching the way they’ve done,” Granderson said. “It was my turn to hit, and hopefully if I get something to hit, I can put it someplace where they aren’t, and that’s basically what happened.”
The Mets quickly upped their lead to 3-1 against Matt Belisle in the sixth. Travis d’Arnaud singled with two outs and scored when Loney, who was 0-of-14, drilled an RBI double into the right-field corner.
“It feels great. Throughout the course of the year, a lot of times you’re not getting hits, but those games you want the team to win so it feels better,” Loney said. “Even better when you contribute.”