OF SCHMIDT

Wheeler goes from wild card to Mets’ ace

ARLINGTON, Texas — Zack Wheeler was not even supposed to be here. After a two-year, setback-filled rehab from Tommy John surgery, the Mets wanted to ease the righthander back slowly this season. Instead, he has quickly established himself of the ace of the Mets’ floundering staff.

Wednesday night, Wheeler held off the Rangers for seven innings. He allowed one run on six hits, walked three and struck out five. It was his third straight quality start and his fifth out of his last six starts. He leads the once highly-touted Mets staff with a 3.45 ERA.

“I could not have imagined that,” Terry Collins said. “At the end of spring training we were deciding: Does he start, does he not, is he going to pitch out of the bullpen, do we keep him in Florida, how do we save innings. “And right now he’s as steady as we got.” Wednesday, he flashed the stuff that made him a firstround draft pick in 2009 and the prize of the Mets’ deal with the Giants for Carlos Beltran two years later. But he did it with much better command than he showed before his 2015 surgery.

“Honestly I didn’t know what to expect coming in,” Wheeler said. “There was a lot of stuff going on. I didn’t even know if I was going to make it out of spring training with the team. It’s satisfying to know I am healthy after every start. Sort of the main goal staying healthy and give the team a chance to win.”

There were many reasons Wheeler wasn’t scheduled to be here pitching with the Mets in June 2017. He was included in that 2015 trade-deadline deal which included Wilmer Flores for Carlos Gomez that fell through and became an afterthought as the rotation led the Mets to the World Series in 2015. He was scheduled to start the season in extended spring training because of an innings limit and concern about the setbacks he had suffered last season trying to come back. Wheeler, however, pitched so well he forced the Mets’ hand this spring, pitching his way into their plans.

Wednesday, he got in trouble early, loading the bases with no outs in the first inning. An overturned call on a double play gave the Rangers the only run they would get out of that. After giving up the run, Wheeler got the ground ball he needed out of Robinson Chirinos to end the inning. He flirted with trouble again in the third and fourth, but worked his way out of it.

In his final inning, Wheeler had runners on first and second and labored to get Delino DeShields out on a flyout to right.

All night, Wheeler worked with nine runners in scoring position and allowed just one to score.

Now, with the rest of the staff struggling, they went into Wednesday’s game with the third worst staff ERA in the majors, the Mets can’t imagine their staff without him.