BUSTED AT BREAK
WHEELERELER HAMMERED IN POSSIBLE FINAL CITI START
A chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” might have been applicable for Zack Wheeler as he departed the mound Sunday, but this probably isn’t how he would want to remember Citi Field.
With the right-hander serving as potential trade bait and the Mets set to open the second half on the road, Wheeler — if all goes according to manager Mickey Callaway’s rotat i on alignment — wouldn’t pitch in Citi again until July 28, only three days before the trade deadline. Will he still be with the Mets by then?
Wheeler’s trade value didn’t improve Sunday, when the Phillies jumped him early and added on later, sending the Mets to the All-Star break with an 8-3 loss.
“I was focused on today and that was about it,” Wheeler said when asked if he considered it might have been his final home start for the Mets.
He lasted f ive-plus innings and surrendered six earned runs on eight hits and two walks, snapping a streak of three straight quality starts. Wheeler is headed to free agency after this season and serves as the biggest trade chip for the Mets (40-50), who arrived at the break needing a second-half miracle.
Wheeler said the Phillies might have known what pitches were coming early — they pounced for four runs against him in the first — and after he made an adjustment the results improved. That was until Jay Bruce smashed a two-run homer in the sixth against him.
“The first inning those guys were turning around high fastballs and I faced them a week ago, so you knew they might be sitting on it, but not like that,” Wheeler said. “We were able to figure it out after that and sort of stop the bleeding until Jay came up there [in the sixth].”
The Mets were hitless into the sixth against Aaron Nola before Pete Alonso slugged homer No. 30 to slice the Phillies’ lead to 6-2. Alonso, who is headed to Cleveland for the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game, became only the third rookie — Mark McGwire and Aaron Judge are the others — to arrive at the break with at least 30 homers.
“It was a lot of work to get here and I’m just real happy with the way I played,” Alonso said.
Nola walked Todd Frazier and Wilson Ramos in the second, but escaped unscathed. The Mets didn’t get another runner on base until the sixth, when Rhys Hoskins booted Jeff McNeil’s grounder for an error. Alonso followed with a blast over the fence in right-center.
Bruce, who delivered a goahead RBI single against Edwin Diaz in the ninth inning two days earlier, homered against Wilmer Font in the eighth to give him 11 RBIs in seven games against the Mets this season.
But Font’s most notable pitch of the game might have come an inning earlier, when he drilled Hoskins, a day after Frazier got plunked by a Jake Arrieta changeup and was ejected for protesting a warning that was issued to both teams. Hoskins got his revenge in the eighth against Font, with a solo homer.
Wheeler faced nine batters in a first inning in which the Phillies scored four runs on five hits. J.T. Realmuto delivered a two-run double to give the Phillies a 3-0 lead before Bruce’s RBI single brought in another run. The scoring had started with Hoskins’ RBI double, after Scott Kingery and Bryce Harper each singled.
Callaway pointed to a bullpen that pitched to a 7.68 ERA over the last 37 games of the first half as the biggest factor in the team’s struggles.
“We’ve leaned on our bullpen probably less than anybody in the major leagues and that has been the part that has probably hurt us the most,” Callaway said. “That probably has been the most frustrating part, the part that you don’t lean on a ton and it hurts you. We just have to come out the second half and be better as a bullpen and if we do that I feel like we’re going to get to where we want to go.”