Any time an athlete faces his former team for the first time, whether or not the split was acrimonious, there's always some extra juice for the outing.
Zack Wheeler may not have had too much extra motivation the first time he pitched against the Giants as a Met – he was a Top 100 prospect but still in A-ball when he was dealt for Carlos Beltran in 2011 – but he certainly did on Sunday, when he helped the Phillies to a 6-2 win over the Mets.
It was "just another game," Wheeler said in a Zoom media call on Saturday, but he admitted after the game to that extra juice.
"My adrenaline was going, I was out there and I got excited, but once you get out there, you have to settle those nerves and just remember it's another game, even though you know those guys and (are) competing against them," Wheeler said. " You're facing your old team, you want to go out there and do well, there's no way around it – but like I said, you just have to calm yourself down and just go out there and just pitch."
Pitch he did, allowing two runs on six hits over seven strong innings, which he credited in part to his backstop.
"I put my info in and (catcher) Andrew (Knapp) had a good game plan, as it was, and we just followed that and it went well," Wheeler said.
He wouldn't, however, offer any form of an 'I told you so' to the Mets or general manager Brodie Van Wagenen, who said back when Wheeler signed his big deal with Philly that "the contract and the market that he enjoyed was beyond what our appetite level was. He got paid more than we were willing to give him."
So far that gamble has paid off for the Phillies, as Wheeler is 3-0 with a 2.81 ERA this year while the Mets' rotation has been crushed by injuries, ineffectiveness, and opt-outs, well after the Mets were "basically crickets" when Wheeler gave them the chance to match Philly's offer before signing.
"I'm not trying to prove anybody wrong," Wheeler said when reminded of Van Wagenen's quote. "It's nothing personal against those guys, but I enjoyed my time over there made a lot of good friends, like I said, and so, it was just fun competing against them."
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