While right-hander Zack Wheeler continues to rehab from the elbow surgery which wiped out his 2015 season, there’s been no shortage of interest in the former top pitching prospect.
However, Mets assistant general manager John Ricco told Marc Carig of Newsday said that the team is by no means shopping him, but will of course listen to offers on him or anyone else on the team.
“We’re not actively shopping Zack by any stretch,” Ricco said. “But as with the other starters, if something came up that we thought made us better, we’re going to talk about it.”
Last week at the GM Meetings, Ricco included Wheeler among the team’s coveted arsenal of young power arms that had generated a lot of buzz in Boca Raton and garnered plenty of inquiries from rival general managers.
That group also includes Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard.
“Just in case, they want to hear it from us that we’re probably not moving them,” Ricco told reporters. “It’s ‘very unlikely’ is what we’ve been telling them.”
Wheeler, 25, is not expected back until June, but there’s still been plenty of interest in him from teams who see him as high reward, low risk type player. And as you’ll recall, the Mets nearly dealt him at the trade deadline before the deal unraveled.
“He’s different because he’s not going to be there for the first couple of months,” Ricco explained.
“But before the injury, he was viewed just as highly — or maybe even as a more highly regarded prospect and pitcher — than the other guys. We think coming off the surgery he’s going to be pain-free and might be better than the guy we saw when he came up.”
Heading into Spring Training last February, I expected Wheeler to have a breakthrough season in 2015 before Tommy John surgery killed any notion of that happening.
Wheeler tossed 185 1/3 innings in 2014, posting a 3.54 ERA, 1.327 WHIP and a 9.1 strikeout rate. But what suggested to me that a breakout was coming were his first and second half splits: 3.90/3.04 ERA, 1.35/1.27 WHIP, and a 8.7/9.6 K9.
It’s incredible to think that Wheeler was once regarded as the best of the bunch among all the Mets starters when they were in the minors. He was the number one guy. Armed with three plus pitches including a mid-90s fastball, it was easy to see why.
The Mets have a lot of areas they need to address this Winter and it doesn’t seem they’re going to raise payroll much higher than this year’s $110 million level. If they are going to explore the trade market, they’re gonna have to deal from their strength which is their pitching. It will be interesting to see how this evolves this offseason.
