“Helped him parlay two good half-seasons over the last five years into $118 million” has aged poorly enough.
But a new report details a second way in which the New York Mets woefully misfired when evaluating Zack Wheeler during the 2019-20 free agency cycle.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote on Sunday’s NLCS travel day — which came one day after yet another brilliant postseason outing by Wheeler pushed the Phillies to the brink of their second straight pennant (the first for which Wheeler was also largely responsible) — that Mets doctors advised against signing the right-hander due to long-term injury concern.
“Mets doctors were among other medical people who recommended against signing due to his medical history,” Heyman wrote, “including his Tommy John surgery.”
The Mets get plenty of flak, even to this day, for their evaluation of Wheeler as a pitcher. At this point, $23.6 million doesn’t just look like a steal — it looks like a heist of Nicolas Cage in National Treasure (before he got caught) proportions. Wheeler’s yearly ERAs with the Phillies has only finished over 3.00 once, in a 2023 season in which he seemed to deliberately pace himself to stay fresh for the stretch run and October. He arguably should’ve won the 2021 Cy Young Award and, with each passing start the last two Octobers, has climbed into ever-increasingly exclusive echelons of postseason excellence.
But the Mets’ projection of his future durability was, apparently, just as much of a whiff. If you believe Wheeler should’ve won that Cy Young Award a couple years ago, his MLB-leading 213 1/3 innings is likely your primary reason why. He fired 192 more this season, good for 12th in baseball. The only reason he threw just 153 innings across 26 starts last season was that the Phillies shut him down for a good chunk of September, with the team in solid playoff positioning and looking to ready their best arm for October. He’s made 32 starts twice in his three non-pandemic seasons as a Phillie.
To be fair, the Mets’ caution didn’t completely come out of nowhere. Wheeler underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2015 and ended up missing the entire ’15 and ’16 regular seasons; back-to-back 180-plus-inning seasons in 2018 and 2019 weren’t enough to assuage the lingering concern.
Such concern, as well, wasn’t borne out of spite (as far as we know). The same cannot be said for Van Wagenen’s remarks, a clapback after Wheeler simply noted the silence during free agency from the team that made him pay for his own postseason tickets in 2015.
Still, though — consider it a swing and a miss by the Mets, yet another in a free agency saga that’s years in the past yet still haunts the Phillies’ NL East rival and won’t stop haunting them anytime soon.
Must-read (or watch) Phillies content
- Our own Bailey Digh went in-depth on the strategy behind the Phillies’ Game 5 first-inning double steal, the franchise’s first steal of home in postseason history.
- Oct. 23 was a special day of bedlam last year. Can the Phillies make it similarly special in 2023? Our own Destiny Lugardo on a perfect parallel.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Devin Jackson wrote about what Rob Thomson suggested is the last hurdle for Rhys Hoskins’ return.
- It was an off day well-spent for Liam and Nick Castellanos.
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