Zack Wheeler and the trade deadline decision

Zack Wheeler gave the Mets seven strong innings on Saturday, the ninth time this season he’s pitched that long into the game. In the past, one of the criticisms of Wheeler was that he threw so many pitches that he had to leave the game early and ended up being a strain on the bullpen. After his rotten first two starts of the year, Wheeler has gone at least six innings in 13 of his last 14 starts. He sits in fifth place among National League pitchers with 101.2 IP.

Right now the question is what to do with Wheeler, who’s an impending free agent. It’s easy to look at his 4.69 ERA and conclude that he’s not worth what he’ll be able to command on the open market. For the sake of argument – at least in this graph – let’s assume that’s true. The Mets have to decide which is better for them. Do they aggressively shop Wheeler at the deadline or do they hold onto him, get whatever value they can for the remainder of 2019 and then extend him the QO, with the idea they may get him for another season if he takes it and get a draft pick if he doesn’t?

The Mets are in the midst of their toughest stretch of the season, a slate where they play 28 straight games against teams that have designs on a playoff spot. So far, the club is holding its own, going 7-8 in this stretch. Throughout history, regardless of sport, the idea is to play .500 against the good teams and clean up against the bad ones. Unfortunately, the Mets were two games under .500 when this stretch started. The good news is that they haven’t been buried by this stretch. The bad news is that there are just 85 games left to play and the club is eight games behind the division-leading Braves.

If your belief is that Wheeler isn’t worth what he’ll get in free agency, the team’s shot at a postseason berth here in 2019 will have to factor into the decision on what to do with him. Now, it may not be the ultimate factor. If some club in the hunt offered Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn, you’d be a fool not to take that deal. But likely that type of trade won’t magically appear.

This time last year, there were rumors that the Mets were going to deal Wheeler at the deadline. In 11 starts from June 1 to July 29, Wheeler had a 3.20 ERA and a 1.152 WHIP. But his poor start was masking his overall strong pitching, as he had a 4.11 ERA at the deadline. Allegedly, at least six teams expressed interest in Wheeler. Somewhat surprisingly, not one rejected trade offer made its way into the public realm. We know the Mets didn’t receive what they felt were reasonable offers but we have no idea what those offers were.

Is Wheeler’s trade value higher now than it was a season ago? On one hand, you have what he did in August and September last year, nine starts with a 1.74 ERA, buttressing what he did in June and July. On the other hand, he has just two more months of team control available now, plus the fact that he hasn’t repeated his 2018 season.

Or has he?

Last year in 29 starts, Wheeler put up a 4.2 fWAR. This year in 19 starts, he has a 2.1 fWAR. If his final three months are anything remotely like his close from 2018, he’ll actually end up with a higher mark in that category. Would you bet the mortgage on it? No, it’s far from a slam dunk. But it also has a reasonable shot of happening, maybe 35% or so. Whether that number is right or not, it’s big enough not to dismiss outright.

Of course, fWAR uses FIP instead of ERA as one of its inputs. FIP ends up normalizing things such as BABIP and LOB% – areas where Wheeler is currently underperforming. It does not normalize HR rate. However, that’s what xFIP does and we see that Wheeler in 2018 had a 3.81 ERA while the 2019 version checks in with a 3.88 mark in that category. From a quality standpoint, Wheeler is pitching essentially the same this year as a season ago. But instead of “luck” shaving a half a run off his xFIP, like it did in 2018, it’s adding 0.81 to his ERA currently.

In his first eight starts of the season, covering 49.2 IP, Wheeler had a 4.35 ERA. What was hurting him in this stretch was the one-two combo of a .336 BABIP and an 8.9 BB%. He was simply allowing too many baserunners. His strikeouts and homers allowed were very strong in this stretch. But in the seven outings from May 16 to June 17, he had a normal .305 BABIP and a 4.6 BB%. But his HR rate skyrocketed in this span, as he allowed 11 HR in 45 IP, which led to a 5.60 ERA.

No pitcher can succeed in the long run with an 18.3 HR/FB rate, which is what Wheeler had in that last stretch detailed above. Last year, Jon Gray of the Rockies had the highest HR/FB rate in the majors among qualified pitchers with an 18.1 mark. He finished the year with a 5.12 ERA.

Seeing Wheeler’s outing yesterday, where he did not serve up a gopher ball and allowed 1 ER in 7 IP, is an encouraging sign. But even that comes with a caveat, as a ball that Addison Russell hit to center field with two runners on base in the second inning seemed to be knocked down by the wind. But no one blinks an eye over wind-blown homers or wall scrapers. That’s baseball – these things happen and over the course of a season, you hope they even out.

And that’s where FIP and xFIP comes in. If you accept that in the long haul that these things do even out – that a guy with a lifetime .299 BABIP and a 73.2 LOB% and an 11.4 HR/FB rates isn’t defined by a small stretch with a .336 BABIP or a 67.2 LOB% or an 18.3 HR/FB – then you know better than to define Wheeler by his current 4.69 ERA.

Can he improve on those numbers going forward? We’ve already seen it with the BABIP. Hopefully yesterday was the start of the LOB% and HR/FB rates. We saw last year what Wheeler at his best could give you. Shoot, we even saw a reasonable facsimile of it this year in a six-game stretch. From April 12 to May 10, he had a 2.93 ERA and a 1.225 WHIP despite a .340 BABIP. The key was that he only allowed 2 HR in 40 IP in that span.

Virtually no pitcher is the same over an entire season. There will be peaks and valleys throughout the year. Just like a stretch last year with an ERA under 2.00 shouldn’t be the expectation for Wheeler, neither should a shorter stretch this year with a 5.60 ERA. In fact, let’s look at his numbers since the start of 2018, where he seems to have finally put the earlier injury problems behind him.

In his last 45 games, a span of 284 IP that includes both great and horrible stretches, Wheeler has a 3.80 ERA, a 3.42 FIP and a 3.83 xFIP. This seems to be a reasonable expectation of who he is. Certainly, it’s how Wheeler will want to be paid in his next contract. Some will point to Dallas Keuchel and his troubles getting a long-term deal this past winter. That certainly should be a sobering thought for Wheeler and his agent.

And it might be the last hope for Wheeler and the Mets to agree on a long-term deal. His poor ERA this year and the less-than-robust free agent market the past few seasons might make Wheeler more open to an extension than he was this past winter. Not that the Mets seemed in any hurry to offer him one then.

In his last two seasons before free agency, Keuchel had a combined 5.6 fWAR. Wheeler already has 6.3 fWAR with half a year left to add (or subtract) to that total. You can say that no front office makes its decisions based on fWAR. And while you are probably right, it’s an objective measure that gives us one data point into how one might perceive worth.

Keuchel ended up signing for a pro-rated portion of the QO, which he had rejected earlier. His belief he was worth more than that didn’t come true in the marketplace. It’s easy to imagine the same thing happening to Wheeler. So, if the market won’t pay “market value,” what’s the tradeoff in dollars for multiple years that works for both Wheeler and the Mets?

That answer is far from clear. But my hope is that the front office and Wheeler’s reps are working on that right now. My opinion is that there’s untapped value left in Wheeler and my preference is to see that happen in a Mets uniform. Even if you don’t share that point of view, you should still be concerned how the Mets will replace the innings Wheeler has given them this season.