Zack Wheeler didn’t pitch in 2015 due to Tommy John surgery but had hoped to join the Mets for their postseason run. New York made it to the World Series that fall but Wheeler wasn’t in attendance, instead watching the games from the comfort of his living room couch. Mike Puma of the New York Daily News detailed this strange sequence of events in his new book, If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets,” available in stores now. The injured hurler wanted to experience postseason baseball in person but the Mets, for whatever reason, didn’t let him, denying his request to watch from the dugout or accompany the team on their trips to Los Angeles, Chicago and Kansas City.
After being rebuffed, Wheeler, now of the Philadelphia Phillies, asked if the Mets would at least comp him playoff tickets so he could support his teammates from the stands at Citi Field. Stunningly, the Mets said Wheeler would have to buy tickets on his own dime, at which point the right-hander decided to stop pushing, accepting the team didn’t want him around, even as a spectator.
“I just wanted to be part of the playoff experience, even if it was in the clubhouse or in the dugout, just so I could be a part of the experience so when I came back I wouldn’t be shell-shocked if I went out there for my first playoff game. I would already be used to the noise, the reaction, that type of stuff,” explained Wheeler. “Then I was like, ‘Can I get some tickets and sit in the stands even?’ They were like, ‘You have to buy your own.’ I wasn’t going to buy tickets to watch my own team play, so I ended up sitting at home.”
A prized prospect and former first-round pick who the Mets acquired from San Francisco in 2011, Wheeler was coming off a breakout season when he injured his elbow in 2015, leading the team with 187 strikeouts the year prior. Yet the Mets didn’t feel the need to include him in any of their postseason festivities, making Wheeler watch from home like everyone else.
After being snubbed in humiliating fashion by his own team, is it any wonder Wheeler flew the coup as a free agent in 2019, defecting to the Phillies on a five-year, $118-million contract? The Mets were obviously under different ownership then, but it’s still shocking they would go to such drastic lengths to hang one of their top young starters out to dry.
Wheeler was excellent in his debut season with the Phillies last year (career-best 2.92 ERA) and has gotten off to a similarly superb start in 2021 (3.13 ERA, 9.95 K/9 through five starts). If the 30-year-old spends the next four seasons tormenting his former team (he’ll have plenty of opportunities playing in the same division), the Mets will only have themselves to blame.
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