Last night, the Mets had to play a grueling 14 inning game against the Chicago Cubs, which they ended up losing by a score of 7-1.

The 14th inning was an absolute disaster as Buddy Baumann gave up four runs and Gerson Bautista gave up two more to combine for a six-run beating.

To this point, Baumann has allowed 13 runs (10 earned) in only 3 1/3 innings pitched while Bautista has allowed six runs in only 4 1/3 innings this season.

So, why were the two of them still on the roster last night?

Well, that is because the team decided to DFA two other pitchers, P.J. Conlon (claimed by the Dodgers) and Scott Copeland instead.

Neither pitcher has been spectacular in their time in the major leagues, but they have both found more success than the previous two.

Conlon had allowed seven runs in 5 2/3 innings (two starts) while striking out two batters. Despite that not being impressive, the 24-year old was the Organizational Pitcher of the Year in 2016, with a 1.65 ERA across two levels of the minor leagues that season.

While the chances of him repeating that at any point at the major-league level were slim-to-none, the team still shouldn’t have given up that quickly on a pitcher who did that well as recently as two years ago.

Even if they didn’t think he was a starter, they should have at least tried him in a relief role, with Saturday being the perfect opportunity to give him some work having not pitched since Monday (four days of rest).

Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, but considering Baumann’s struggles this season, it probably couldn’t have been much worse than that.

Copeland also should not have been a DFA casualty as he could have provided the team with some innings last night after his impressive performance on Thursday.

In his case, the team will probably be able to just outright him to the minors, but he could have been useful last night and played a similar role to that of Luke Farrell, who gave the Cubs five innings of work last night to avoid taxing the bullpen.

The team definitely should not have DFA’d Gerson Bautista to keep him on the roster, as the hard-throwing righty still has a lot of potential, but they probably should have just optioned him while calling up Jamie Callahan and immediately placing him on the MLB 60-day disabled list to remove him from the 40-man roster temporarily.

That would have allowed the team to keep Copeland and add Jose Lobaton to the roster on Friday.

So while this is all hindsight at this point, the Mets could have very well used these pieces and can’t continue the dysfunctional roster management that they have had all season. They keep wasting roster spots and passing on talented players for the ability to protect undeserving veterans like Baumann and Jose Reyes.