NEW YORK -- One year later, the New York Mets finally landed All-Star outfielder Jay Bruce to boost a struggling lineup. And now, hell provide protection for Yoenis Cespedes rather than an alternative to him.Minutes before Mondays trade deadline, the third-place Mets obtained Bruce from the Cincinnati Reds for young infielder Dilson Herrera and minor league left-hander Max Wotell.The 29-year-old Bruce was hitting .265 with 25 homers and a National League-leading 80 RBI. He made the NL All-Star team for the third time.This was an opportunity to deal from a position of relative strength in the system to acquire some offense that we felt we needed, general manager Sandy Alderson said.Bruce is expected to arrive Tuesday, manager Terry Collins said.New York also re-acquired lefty Jon Niese from Pittsburgh for reliever Antonio Bastardo. Niese will work out of the bullpen at first but also gives the Mets an experienced starter who could fill in for a rotation missing injured Matt Harvey and rehabbing Zack Wheeler.The moves follow last years trade-deadline acquisition of Cespedes, whose offensive spark helped the Mets reach the World Series for the first time since 2000.Before getting Cespedes from Detroit for pitcher Michael Fulmer, the Mets nearly completed a deal with Cincinnati for Bruce. When talks fell through, New York soon turned its attention to Cespedes.Look, it was an extraordinary turnaround last year. All we can do is try to acquire as many good players as we can to put ourselves in a position to maybe have that magic again, Alderson said. I do think, given our situation right now and the quality of players we have right now otherwise in the clubhouse, somebody like Jay Bruce can be a catalyst for more productive performance out of the other players that we have, especially sitting in the middle of our order.The banged-up Mets began Monday with a 54-50 record, 6 1/2 games behind NL East-leading Washington and 2 1/2 games back for the NLs second wild card. Their .237 batting average was the lowest in the major leagues.Bruce has been a clutch hitter this season, and New York is in dire need of one. Dreadful with runners in scoring position, the Mets ranked 13th out of 15 NL teams in runs.I think hell make a big impact, Collins said.Bruces dangerous left-handed bat should slot in nicely behind Cespedes -- if and when the right-handed slugger is healthy enough to play.Hampered by a strained right quadriceps thats been nagging him for weeks, Cespedes was out of the starting lineup Monday night against the New York Yankees for the second consecutive game.Bruce joins a crowded outfield that includes two other left-handed hitters in Curtis Granderson and Michael Conforto. Alderson acknowledged that Bruce is not an absolute perfect fit for us.We start with the need for offense and work from there, the GM said.Bruce, however, is under team control next season and does provide another type of protection for Cespedes, because the Cuban star can opt out of his contract and become a free agent again after this years World Series.We would not have done the deal without the extra year of control, Alderson said. We were not looking for a rental player, certainly not looking to give up the kind of talent we did for the next two months.Bruce homered in five straight games in late July, a career best. A downside has been his career-long penchant for following a torrid streak with an incredibly cold one.Bruce has a .249 career average with 233 homers in nine major league seasons. He is earning $12.5 million this year, and his contract includes a $13 million team option for 2017 with a $1 million buyout.New York clinched the NL East title in Cincinnati last September and return for a three-game series from Sept. 5-7.Cincinnati is into its second year of rebuilding, trading any high-priced veteran it can. The Reds dealt starters Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake, All-Star Home Run Derby winner Todd Frazier and closer Aroldis Chapman in the past year.They tried to trade second baseman Brandon Phillips to the Nationals, but blocked the deal. They also had the framework of a three-team deal in place that wouldve sent Bruce to Toronto in the offseason, but that fell through.Herrera, 22, was once regarded as the Mets future second baseman. He made his major league debut in 2014 and hit .215 over 49 big league games in the `14 and `15 seasons. He was batting .276 with 13 homers and 55 RBI this year at Triple-A Las Vegas.We liked Dilson very much, no question about that, Alderson said. Its not that our estimation of Dilson has gone down, we realize we have some other options and seem to be well-covered there.Traded from the Mets to Pittsburgh last December for second baseman Neil Walker, Niese struggled during his time with the Pirates. He went 8-6 with a 4.91 ERA and was moved to the bullpen earlier this month.The 29-year-old Niese is making $9 million in the final season of a deal he signed with the Mets in March 2012, a contract that includes a $10 million team option for 2017 with a $500,000 buyout.Bastardo, who went 4-1 with a 2.98 ERA in 2015 with Pittsburgh, posted a 4.74 ERA in 41 appearances for the Mets. Bastardo agreed to a $12 million, two-year deal with New York in January and is owed $6.5 million in 2017. Y.A. Tittle Youth Jersey . 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PITTSBURGH -- The former nanny of Pittsburgh Penguins player Chris Kunitz was sentenced Tuesday to five years in federal prison for setting fire to her rental residence and then filing fraudulent insurance claims for the contents.The public defender for Andrea Forsythe, 28, unsuccessfully sought a term running concurrently to one shell receive next month for thefts from the Penguins player and other people for whom she worked as a nanny.She also was ordered to pay more than $179,000 restitution to the insurance companies that covered her losses in the June 23, 2014 fire in Sturgeon.In the other cases, Forsythe was convicted of numerous crimes and will be sentenced Jan. 3 by a judge in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. Prosecutors say she stole $12,000 diamond earrings from Kunitzs home in 2013 and sold them to jewelry stores. The earrings were a birthday present for Kunitzs wife, Maureen.The theft charges filed by police in Collier Township, where Kunitz lives with his wife and their children, grew out of the arson and insurance fraud investigation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Sturgeon fire.Forsythe pleaded guilty in July to federal charges of malicious destruction of property by fire and wire fraud for burning the house, then filing fraudulent insurance claims for the contents, including some jewels she had allegedly stolen from another couple while also working as a nanny.The other couple told investigators that an 18-karat gold diamond necklace worth about $4,400 and a gold diamond stud earring worth more than $10,000 had been stolen from them. Appraisals of those jewels were then used by Forsythe to make the fraudulent insurance claims, federal authorities contend.ddddddddddddAs that investigation progressed, Forsythe eventually confessed to stealing the earrings from Maureen Kunitz. They were appraised at $11,900 when Kunitz bought them for his wifes birthday sometime before she noticed them missing in September 2013.Forsythe acknowledged stealing the diamond earrings from Maureen Kunitzs bedroom while the couple wasnt home, the Collier Township police complaint said. Forsythe then sold a loose diamond from one earring to a jewelry store for $2,542 and the other earring to a precious metals and jewelry store for $1,408.50.Forsythes federal public defender, Jay Finkelstein, in court documents blamed the thefts on Forsythes allegedly abusive home life as a child. Finkelstein has a blanket policy of not commenting to the media.U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon refused Finkelsteins request to allow Forsythes federal sentence to run concurrently to whatever sentence she receives next month saying the theft victims deserve their own justice, so to speak, and the court will not intervene here.However, the county judge could still order that sentence to run concurrent to the federal sentence. If that happens, Forsythe would get credit for serving both terms simultaneously, instead of serving them one after the other.Forsythes public defender in the Allegheny County theft case didnt immediately return a call for comment Tuesday.---This story has been corrected to say earrings were sold to jewelry stores rather than jury stores. ' ' '