Aside from a one-inning rehab appearance with the St. Lucie Mets late in the 2016 season, Zack Wheeler hasn’t pitched in a minor league game since 2013. Back then, he was a highly-touted prospect who had been acquired from the San Francisco Giants for Carlos Beltran by Sandy Alderson’s front office way back in 2011.
Wheeler made his big league debut in 2013, too, and things went reasonably well. While he didn’t make that immediate impression that some of the Mets’ other minor league graduations have during this era of the team, he had a respectable 3.