PHILADELPHIA — Shockingly, J.D. Martinez has never faced Zack Wheeler.
Of the hundreds of pitchers Martinez has faced in his 14 years in the big leagues, Wheeler, the former Mets right-hander, isn’t one of them. That could change Saturday when the Philadelphia Phillies and the Mets begin the NLDS at Citizens Bank Park.
Wheeler, who signed a five-year $118 million contract after leaving the Mets in late 2019, and re-signed a three-year deal this spring, will be on the mound facing Mets ace Kodai Senga in Game 1, further fanning the flames of an already heated rivalry.
“I’ve never faced him, but I know he’s a tough guy and I know he’s a great pitcher,” Martinez said Thursday night after the Mets eliminated the Milwaukee Brewers to advance to the Division Series. “It’s supposed to be a battle, kind of like how it was at home when we faced him.”
Wheeler last faced the Mets only a few weeks ago at Citi Field. The 34-year-old was fantastic, limiting the Mets to only two earned runs over seven innings, but still took the loss. He’s 5-5 with a 3.56 ERA against his former team.
The Mets didn’t produce a ton of offense in three Wild Card games against the Brewers, which looked worrisome for a lineup built on length. Before Pete Alonso’s momentous home run Thursday night, it was looking as though the hitters had run out of gas.
However, hitting coaches Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez have never been discouraged by what they’ve seen from the top hitters on the team like Alonso and Martinez.
“The process is all we can really rely on,” Barnes told the Daily News. “Yeah, we want results, especially now, but we can’t guarantee results, right? Like, you hit a ball 115 miles an hour, then make a double play. It sucks, yeah. But as long as the work is good and the process is right, that’s all Chavi and I can really control and care about..
“And that’s what we’ve been trying to do. We’ve continued to preach all year to just trust the process, do your work, stay the course. Even if it looks bad, just keep going.”
Philadelphia knows a thing or two about “trusting the process.” But the Mets have largely trusted that things were going to work out, even when it looked as though they wouldn’t, and they now point to Alonso’s home run as evidence. This is why manager Carlos Mendoza continued to keep Alonso in the cleanup spot, wanting to communicate that trust to a scuffling slugger.
Alonso has hit from the No. 4 spot 452 times this season, more than any other spot combined.
“He’s Pete Alonso,” Mendoza said. “He’s dangerous and he’s a really good hitter.”
Wheeler and Alonso overlapped in 2019, Wheeler’s final season in Queens. The team spent much of the year trying to trade him and nearly did at the deadline, with former general manager Brodie Van Wagenen trying to get Kyle Tucker from the Houston Astros for him.
The relationship with the Mets had started to erode long before that, when the team told Wheeler to buy his own World Series tickets during the 2015 playoff run. The Mets never thought he was tough enough, with Van Wagenen even citing his injury history in a backhanded way when Wheeler signed his contract with the Phillies.
“Our health and performance department, our coaches all contributed and helped him parlay two good half-seasons over the last five years into a $118 million,” Van Wagenen infamously said in 2020. “I’m proud of what our group was able to help him accomplish. I’m happy he was rewarded for it. Players deserve to be rewarded when they perform well. More than anything else, I’m thrilled with the pitching staff we have.”
Wheeler says there is no ill will these days. The team has turned over and so has management. He has put himself in Cy Young contention since coming to Philadelphia and has helped pitch the Phillies to a World Series and an NLCS in each of the past two seasons.
“It’s fun playing against those guys always, but at the same time, I’ve been over here for a while now and there’s no hard feelings,” Wheeler said Friday after the Phillies held a workout. “Everything has kind of changed over there personnel-wise. Like I said, there’s no hard feelings, it’s just baseball at this point, but at the end of the day I want to win.”
The Mets have to find a way to crack one of the best pitching staffs in baseball for the second straight series. They might be underdogs in this series, but they really don’t care.
“If they say we suck, we suck,” Martinez said. “Let’s suck. Let’s go suck together. Let’s go have fun sucking. Let’s enjoy it and that is kind of what I think we did.”