For four innings, Dillon Gee looked like the pitcher who consistently gave the Mets quality innings last year, the pitcher who won 13 games the year before, pounding the strike zone, getting ahead in the count and taming the Braves’ potent lineup.
Looks, however, can be deceiving.
In the fifth, it all fell apart to Gee — who reverted back to his inconsistent ways, morphing back into the pitcher who has frustrated the organization this spring.
With two outs and nobody on, Gee allowed six straight hits — including a two-run home run to opposing pitcher Mike Minor — and didn’t make it into the sixth in the Mets’ 6-0 loss in the second game Saturday night at Citi Field as he fell to 2-6 and saw his ERA swell to a bloated 6.34. The Mets lost the first game, 7-5, in 10 innings.
“I don’t know what happened tonight,” he said. “I was throwing well, then I got in the stretch that inning and I couldn’t locate.”
The assumption is when Zach Wheeler is called up, he would fill Jeremy Hefner’s spot in the rotation. Gee, however, better be careful. The right-hander hasn’t been the same pitcher he was last year before a blood clot in his right shoulder sidetracked a promising season, while Hefner has pitched well of late, including six innings of three-hit, two-run ball on Friday, despite a winless record.
“If the time comes that we’re going to make changes, then whoever’s not pitching good, is going to be out,” Collins said. “That’s the nature of the beast.”
Gee has made a habit out of struggling the third time around a batting order, registering just one out in the seventh inning all year. and hasn’t reached the sixth in his last five stars. The opposition is adjusting to him, Gee said, but he isn’t adjusting to them.
“That’s not the Dillon Gee we know,” Collins said.
Gee had no explanation for what went awry in the fifth. He started the frame fine, retiring Brian McCann and Dan Uggla. Then he allowed a seemingly harmless single to Chris Johnson, before Minor crushed a grooved fastball over the left-field wall. His command suddenly was gone from that point on, four hits and four runs followed, and he was lifted for a pinch-hitter after the shaky fifth.
“I just lost it out there,” he said.
He better find it soon — or he could end up in the bullpen or possibly Las Vegas.