It felt so good to hand it to the Yankees on their home turf during the first two games of the Subway Series, and I’m hoping that the Mets bats continue to pummel the baseball when the action shifts to Citi Field tonight.
From all the talk on the SNY post-game show and waking up to a dozen or so different articles about last night’s win, the big concern is Zack Wheeler who has one win to show for his last seven starts.
Coming off a stellar outing against the Miami Marlins in his previous start in which he tossed six scoreless innings despite walking five batters, there was an expectation that Wheeler had turned a corner and even the baseball odds reflected that last night at sportsinteraction.com.
However, Tuesday night’s effort left a lot to be desired for the 23-year old Wheeler.
Win Probability Chart courtesy of FanGraphs. Detailed pitching data courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
After straining through four innings, Wheeler headed into the fifth with his pitch count already at 99 and facing the middle of the Yankees order. But a walk and two singles into the frame, Terry Collins had had enough and pulled the young righty who tossed a career-high 118 pitches.
“When we got the lead in the first inning tonight, it was 4-0, I thought,” Terry Collins said.
“This is the perfect game for this guy to really take control and say, this is going to be mine tonight. This is where the Zack Wheelers of the world step up and say, I’m as good as advertised.”
“He just didn’t have any consistent release point. No feel for where the ball was going. He struggled. But he did as good as he could do, got us as far as he could.”
Wheeler didn’t have a clean inning all night and after allowing five runs on seven hits and six walks his ERA rose to 4.53.
“It was just one of those nights I didn’t have it — that simple,” a dejected Wheeler said after the game.
“It’s an untold rule in baseball: Your team scores for you and you’re supposed to go out there and put up zeroes.”
Mama said there’d be days like this…
Wheeler is closing in on a full season worth of starts in the majors, and through 25 of them so far he has a 3.76 ERA, 1.434 WHIP, 4.4 walk rate, and 7.8 strikeout rate.
