Mets News: Robert Gsellman back to the bullpen is the right move

The New York Mets had not seen the results they had anticipated after adding Robert Gsellman to the starting rotation earlier this season.

It’s no secret that the New York Mets have been struggling for bodies in their starting rotation this season, and it has gotten to the point where manager Luis Rojas has had to be creative in penciling in a starter on most nights that don’t include Jacob deGrom or Rick Porcello. A portion of that creative process was been moving reliever Robert Gsellman to the starting rotation and stretching him out to be a permanent fixture in the rotation for the rest of the season.

While in theory, the idea sounded promising as Gsellman had made 31 career starts coming into the season, the results failed to meet expectations and his starts had put the Mets pitching staff in a bigger hole than they were already in. Gsellman has failed to provide the Mets with any sort of length as a starter in his four starts and he has gotten beaten up to an ERA of almost eight.

While the Mets have been trying to mix and match most of the season with their starters, I believe the removal of Gsellman from the rotation and inserting him back into the bullpen is a better move at this stage of the season as well with regards to Gsellman’s career. With all things considered Gsellman was expected to need a couple of starts to get stretched out, but he had made it past the second inning in only one of his four starts and had taxed the bullpen further with his ineffectiveness.

In the 9.1 innings, the 27-year old right-hander has pitched as a starter to this point, he had averaged around 47 pitches per appearance. His walk percentage is the highest it’s ever been in his career and that is part of the reason Gsellman has struggled to find his footing this season. Taking all of those numbers into account they are not very economical when you are already facing a pitching crisis like the Mets have been in for the good part of the season.

Gsellman has also been known as a notoriously slow starter in his career with his best numbers coming in the month of August and September with a combined 3.59 ERA during those months. Unfortunately during this shortened season, the team no longer had the time to wait for Gsellman to turn it around.

Moving Gsellman back to a more permanent role in the bullpen is both beneficial to both him and the team right now. During his career when Gsellman is coming out of the bullpen hitters are only hitting a .256 batting average off of him in their first plate appearance when facing him.

That number is a lower and more effective average than him facing hitters multiple times in the lineup. As a starter, Gsellman has a career .295 average combined when facing batters a second and third time through the batting order.

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You can’t also forget to mention that with the number of pitches Gsellman has thrown in his appearances, removing him from the starting rotation will put less of a burden on the bullpen for the rest of the season to have to come in earlier in games than expected. The Mets are going to need more length out of their starters over the final stretch of the season, and with Seth Lugo still in the process of being stretched out as a starter as well, it only made sense to move on from this experiment for the rest of this season.