Chris Flexen made his first appearance of the season for the Mets last night after not pitching for 12 days, and the results, unsurprisingly, were not pretty.

The 23-year old went two innings and allowed seven runs (three earned) and eight hits to go along with one strikeout in two innings of work.

However, the seventh inning was the particularly ugly portion of it as the team made two errors (Jose Reyes and then Michael Conforto) that allowed seven runs to cross the plate in that inning alone.

With the team already trailing the Milwaukee Brewers by a score of 10-6 prior to that dreadful seventh inning, the team decided to leave Chris Flexen in for 57 pitches, with the hopes of not wasting more of their bullpen.

There are two questionable portions of this decision by Mickey Callaway, though.

The first thing that is questionable about this is in regards to not having used him for 12 days, and then expecting him to give the team 57 pitches on the fly.

While it is understandable to not want to waste the bullpen, Flexen was in no position to succeed whatsoever and seeing as how his first stint with the team in 2017 went (3-6 record, 7.88 ERA, 2.02 WHIP in 14 games), the young right-hander probably took another hit confidence-wise.

The second part of this that is curious to say the least is, with a doubleheader on Monday, Callaway has been talking about doing a “bullpen-game,” in which Lugo and Gsellman would be the first two pitchers.

According to Callaway yesterday, the team viewed Flexen as an ideal candidate to pitch after the two of them in the game.

With Flexen having thrown 57 pitches yesterday, the chances are he won’t be available to pitch either game that day now, especially when it is considered that he has only made 11 relief appearances in his career in both the minors and majors. This means that he probably isn’t someone who can just pitch again on Monday after just a day off from a strenuous outing like the one last night, which almost all experienced relievers wouldn’t be able to handle regardless.

So, with that being the case, Flexen is likely unavailable the next few days, at least, and I would not be surprised in the slightest if he is optioned within the next 24 hours to make room for a fresh arm.