Mets vs. Diamondbacks recap: Eclipsed by snakes

The Mets are fully at the point of their season that they are either helping or hurting some other team’s chance of making the playoffs in most of their games. On Monday night at Citi Field, they gave the reeling Diamondbacks, who were coming off a poor weekend, a boost.

Despite the loss, there were some positives for the Mets. Robert Gsellman gave up one run in six-and-one-third innings with three strikeouts and a walk. He’ll have to do a lot more of that between now and the end of the season to inspire confidence in what he can do in 2018, but it’s preferable that he pitches well, of course.

And with the Mets down 1-0 in the top of the fifth, Yoenis Cespedes made a spectacular catch. Cespedes seems to be hearing it far too often lately in terms of hustle and/or performance, but in a lost season, it doesn’t seem worth getting worked up over whether or not he’s busting it 100 percent of the time. And regardless of those complaints, that was one hell of a catch. To add to that, he had a three-hit night, and one of those hits was a single that tied the game at one in the bottom of the seventh.

Michael Conforto went 2-for-4 with a walk, and one of his hits was a solo home run that partially answered the two-run dinger that A.J. Pollock had hit off of Erik Goeddel in the top of the tenth inning. And aside from Goeddel’s outing, the Mets bullpen had been excellent Jerry Blevins, Paul Sewald, and AJ Ramos each having a scoreless outing.

It’s all about individual performances at this point. And unfortunately on Monday night, that collection of them wasn’t quite enough for the Mets to win. Fortunately, that doesn’t matter much on a day-to-day basis right now.

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AZ Snake Pit

Box scores

ESPN
MLB

Win Probability Added

FanGraphs

What’s WPA?

Big winners: Paul Sewald, +17.0% WPA, Robert Gsellman, +15.9% WPA, Michael Conforto, +12.9% WPA, AJ Ramos, +12.8% WPA,
Big losers: Erik Goeddel, -41.9% WPA, Wilmer Flores, -16.5% WPA, Dominic Smith, -12.0% WPA, Brandon Nimmo, -11.1% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Paul Goldschmidt grounds into a double play in the eighth, +14.6% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: A.J. Pollock hits a two-run home run in the tenth, -36.6% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: +2.1% WPA
Total batter WPA: -52.1% WPA
GWRBI!: A.J. Pollock