Unhappy about being lifted, Wheeler bows to Girardi’s experience

The game started out fine for Zack Wheeler, began largely the way most of his other starts this season have gone. Wheeler came into the game at Citi Field Monday with a 4-0 record and 2.20 ERA.

He would exit with a frown after only 83 pitches, however, with the remnants of what had been a six-run Phillies lead about to be blown apart by a bullpen that is only partly recovered from its laughingstock days of the season’s first month.

“I’ll be honest, I was a little surprised,” Wheeler said about manager Joe Girardi giving him the hook after six innings in which he allowed three runs on eight hits. “But obviously it’s his call. So you’ve got to respect him.”

Wheeler had largely breezed through four innings, but that run ended when he took a line drive from Mets catcher Robinson Chirinos off his hip, and pain or not, held onto the ball before it fell to the mound for the final out in the Met’s fourth. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence then that Wheeler was slammed for four doubles by the Mets in a three-run fifth.

“Nah,” he said, “it didn’t affect me.”

Wheeler

said

he

was

“over-rotating a little bit out of the stretch,” in both the fifth and sixth, when he was forced to pitch out of trouble.

“Instead of bringing my knee straight up I was rotating too much and I couldn’t bring my fastball glove-side,” Wheeler said. “I just left some balls over the middle instead of hitting my spots.”

Recognizing this, he was ready to settle down again come the seventh inning, but Girardi told him to keep his bench seat instead.

“He just came down and told me I was done,” Wheeler said. “I asked why and he gave his explanation, and that was kind of the end of it. You’ve got to respect him. He’s been around a long time. That’s just the way it is.”

On that point, would agree.

“I just felt that he kind of lost his sharpness,” Girardi said. “I always like Wheels. Always. But he wasn’t quite the same . ... I’ve told these guys all along, ‘There’s going to be some things that I do that you won’t like.’ That’s the bottom line.”

Wheeler, who said “it was a little different” going back as a visitor to Citi Field, “where it all started for me,” probably wasn’t too happy to see his once sixrun lead evaporate when third baseman Jeff McNeil drilled a three-run homer off reliever David Phelps for a 7-6 Mets lead in the

Girardi seventh. But Wheeler had to be heartened to see another Phillies comeback on the day.

“Basically, this season, every game is a big game,” Wheeler said. “Especially now over this last little stretch. We’ve got to win ball games and everybody knows that.”

•••

NOTES » For a doubleheader featuring the has-been Red Sox (14-28, last in AL East) and Phillies (20-17) Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park, Girardi will go with Zach Eflin (2-1, 4.45) in the opener and Vince Velasquez (0-0,

6.60) in the nightcap. Because there’s only so much a manager can do when a team has three doubleheaders in the next seven days. “We don’t have a choice, right?” Girardi said. “You might see some people on the (Lehigh Valley) shuttle. We might have to find some arms here.” ... Hot starting Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm had hit a New York road stop, going

1 for 12 with nine strikeouts over the series’ first three games. The slide had hit

1-for-15 when he finally got a hit in the series, turning out to be a game-tying single in the eighth, setting the Phillies up for a comeback. “We’ve told him,” Girardi said, “‘This is the life of a big-league player, you’re going to run into a lot of really good pitchers all the time.’”