The narrative surrounding Robert Gsellman this season has mostly been about last season: “Was 2016 a fluke?”

After being called up late last season, Gsellman played a big role in getting the Mets to the Wild Card game. He appeared in eight games, starting seven, and pitched 44.2 innings with a 2.42 ERA and 2.63 FIP. He accounted for a 1.4 WAR in those eight games, striking out 42 and walking 15.

He woke up on the wrong side of the bed in 2017 as the first part of the season was a nightmare. Recently, however, he has started to put up numbers resembling his 2016 campaign.

His performance against the Braves last night, in which he pitched seven shutout innings allowing only three hits and one unearned run, was his latest strong outing in a string of quality starts. He has allowed two earned runs or less in five of his six games since returning from the disabled list on August 16th.

“He is an outstanding athlete and he is bound and determined,” manager Terry Collins said. “He is being challenged by something as he hasn’t had the kind of year that he anticipated. Right now, he has to show us he can be one of those guys again. Today he showed us that he could.”

The key to his success seems to be keeping the ball on the ground and having a good defense behind him to make the plays. He has superb movement on his fastball and is succeeding in inducing ground balls – 54.5% of his outs were ground balls on Sunday.

“I tried to get the sinker away from lefties as they had a lot in the lineup,” Gsellman said. “I also used my changeup and I thought it worked well.”

While he was cruising the whole game, he finally ran into some adversity in the 7th inning when with one out, sure-handed Amed Rosario committed two errors in the span of what seemed to be 30 seconds. He booted Johan Camargo’s ground ball before allowing a ball off the bat of Dansby Swanson to go right under his glove. Gsellman bowed his neck and got the next two outs, though an unearned run scored before he could finish the frame.

The Mets starting rotation going into next season is an enormous question mark. If Gsellman can tally one or two more starts before the end of this season, working on his sinker’s movement and keeping the ball down in the strike zone, he could end up being an asset for the 2018 Mets.