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Zack Wheeler, the Mets' Fifth Young Ace, Is Biding His Time

After undergoing Tommy John surgery, Zack Wheeler hasn't pitched for the Mets in 30 months, but he has his eye on rejoining the team's young rotation.
Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports

The words trickled out of the phone in a busy room at the Mets' spring training complex last March. David Altchek, the team's surgeon, was on speaker, so his diagnosis could be heard by everyone. By now, it was clear that the ulnar collateral ligament in Zack Wheeler's right elbow was torn. Wheeler just had to hear it.

And once he did, everything started to go silent. Mets general manager Sandy Alderson and club brass continued to listen to Altchek, but Wheeler zoned out. His mind raced. He was the latest victim of one of baseball's most pernicious ailments. He would undergo Tommy John surgery the next week and begin his long road back to the mound.

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The Mets, perhaps as much as any team, know the risks and rewards of building around talented pitching. They roared to the World Series in 2015 behind a sterling starting rotation headed by Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, and Noah Syndergaard. The first three of those pitchers have already undergone the elbow surgery and Syndergaard could be at risk, if only because he is a pitcher who throws baseballs for a living. This year, that same staff will try to prolong the Mets' window of success.

Wheeler will continue to watch, just as he did all of last season. He is a part of the bedrock the Mets have built for their organization. Before his injury, he was just as hyped a prospect as the other four starters. During his only full season in the majors, in 2014, he showed flashes of becoming an ace, too. But as the Mets flourished, Wheeler was absent, his high-90s fastball and biting slider sidelined. He was almost traded to Milwaukee last July before a deal for Carlos Gomez was nixed at the last moment by Gomez's faulty physical.

Now, Wheeler remains as the fifth Beatle of the Mets' staff. He is still just 25 years old and still talented. When he returns, the rotation, as long it stays together, could continue to morph into a generational force. They are all 27 or younger, can all pitch in the mid-to-high-90s with their fastballs, and suffer no fools with their exemplary secondary stuff.

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"If everybody stays healthy and does well, it could be one of the better rotations, I think, to be around baseball," Wheeler told VICE Sports last month. "People doubt that but, to me, of what I've seen in my lifetime in baseball, it could be one of the better ones. You had the Braves back in the day—[John] Smoltz, [Tom] Glavine, [Greg] Maddux, all those guys. Those guys did it for a long time. So, [the key for] us, is basically to stay healthy. We gotta do it for years. You can't just do it for a year or two."

Wheeler has considered what it would be like to pitch again in a rotation of his peers. The question permeates his thoughts in Port St. Lucie, where he has languished for over a year now. He got there early in 2015 and it seems like he never left.

When the Mets went north to begin the season, he stayed to perform the unseen grunt work of rehab and recovery, making as much progress as his right elbow allowed. His tasks were menial and his days were rote: he would arrive at the team's complex at 8 in the morning and leave around noon, only to bide his time until the Mets played that night, sitting around at home or playing video games until first pitch in New York or wherever their schedule took them.

Not long ago, Wheeler was expected to join Matt Harvey atop the Mets' rotation. Photo by Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Wheeler knew coming into spring training last season that something like this was possible, that surgery might be in his future. The Mets had sent him for two MRIs during the offseason. His elbow had nagged him all throughout 2014.

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"How my elbow felt, I thought it was eventually going to happen," Wheeler said. "It's what everybody says."

He added, "Guys that throw hard have more chance of something. Between that and how my elbow felt, I was like, 'Man, it's probably going to happen. But who knows when. Hopefully it won't happen, but it might happen.'"

It may seem surprising that Wheeler considered surgery fait accompli, but he knows well the history of pitchers and he considered the risk factors. He began the 2014 season knowing that he had torn the flexor tendon in that same elbow—something that was not publicly disclosed until after he underwent Tommy John surgery—and decided to pitch on because he figured that fixing it wouldn't help his UCL anyway.

"If I was in the minor leagues or something, maybe I'd get it fixed," he said. "But you're in the big leagues. This is where you want to be. This is where you're making money. This is where you have fun. This is your job. In the minors, you're still working to get here. This is where you want to eventually be, so you want to take all the precautions. Now that you're here, you do what you gotta do."

Wheeler spent his time between starts triaging his elbow. He would pitch through the nuisance or the pain and then use the days afterward to manage and diminish his injury. If it had caused increased risk to his ligament, Wheeler says, he wouldn't have done it.

Instead, his performance improved in the second half of the season. His ERA fell from 3.90 before the All-Star break to 3.04. He struck out 9.6 batters per nine innings and his WHIP decreased, too. The velocity on his fastball actually increased. With his last pitch of the season—the last one he has thrown in a major league game—Wheeler struck out his seventh batter in five innings with a 78 mph slider.

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"It's a personal choice," he said. "Some guys say, 'Hey, I got elbow soreness or elbow pain, I want to take it to the house and get it checked out.' But to me, it's part of [the game]…. Everybody goes through it eventually."

It has been more than 30 months since Wheeler pitched in a game for the Mets. He can't pinpoint when he'll do so again. As of now, the target is July 1, but that is not a hard date. He first hoped for May or June, but moved off it out of caution after some slight setbacks.

Wheeler knows that returns from Tommy John surgery, while statistically likely, aren't definitive or simple. "That's the thing with TJ—you never know," he said. "Your body reacts differently." Harvey's first year back was relatively smooth, but he benefitted from an 18-month break between surgery and his first regular-season start back—the perfect timetable for recovery, according to studies. DeGrom's road to recovery came with potholes, and it took Matz two whole years to pitch again. So Wheeler is not setting any expectations for himself.

"I just want to be healthy, plain and simple," he said. "I don't know if I'm going to be as crisp as I was. I may struggle, I may not—who knows. Everybody is different along the way."

Mostly, Wheeler just wants to pitch again. When the Mets won the National League East and reached the postseason for the first time in nine years, it validated his preseason confidence in the team—something he was more vocal about than most of his teammates. While he enjoyed watch his fellow pitchers dominate throughout the year, sending them congratulatory texts and keeping in touch, Wheeler also admits that having to watch from afar was difficult. "It sucked," he said.

Wheeler watched the Mets pop champagne in Los Angeles and Chicago after their series wins and found happiness in their success. Still, he wanted to be a part of it, too.

If the Mets' season goes as planned, Wheeler could have his chance this October. Their rotation, another year more seasoned, is expected to be baseball's best. Their lineup, fattened by re-signing Yoenis Cespedes and other additions, should avoid the valleys of last summer. And the pitcher who spent the past year stuck in Florida, left to watch his team's season unfold without him, should finally take the mound again. If things go as planned, he'll only make them better.

"I'm not the jealous type," he said. "But I got Twitter. I got the TV to look at. Yeah, I see things. I see what people say and stuff like that. Sometimes I think that motivates me a little bit more. It pushes me … Maybe it's a blessing in disguise."