For New York Mets fans, the final days of July 2015 will always be the time when Wilmer Flores cried and Yoenis Cespedes arrived.
It's fair to wonder if it will sometimes be best remembered as the time when Zack Wheeler stayed.
Flores and later Cespedes became Citi Field cult heroes in the team's best season in more than a decade. But could Wheeler still be the guy whose Mets legacy lives on for much longer?
For now, he's the guy who missed out on the 2015 fun, the guy who had spring training Tommy John surgery and made his biggest contribution when he wasn't traded to the Milwaukee Brewers (with Flores) for Carlos Gomez. It was that aborted deal that spurred the Mets to acquire Cespedes two days later, and eventually pushed them all the way to the World Series.
Now, six months later, the Mets still have Flores, although he looks to be a backup when the 2016 season begins. They still have Cespedes, although the one-year opt-out in his contract could mean he's gone at year's end.
They also still have Wheeler, now hoping for a June or July return to what really would be the Mets' dream rotation.
They were open to trading him, not only in July, but also in the early days of this offseason. The trade for Cespedes meant they solved the need for a big bat without surrendering Wheeler's potentially big right arm, and the Cespedes re-signing last week means they've done the same thing now.
They've kept all of their starters, with the exception of left-hander Jon Niese, who was dealt to the Pittsburgh Pirates for second baseman (and Daniel Murphy replacement) Neil Walker. So they begin 2016 with a rotation of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz and Bartolo Colon.
They could well end it with Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz and Wheeler.
They had the best rotation in the game last year, one of the best young rotations most of us have seen. And they'll be adding in a guy who won't turn 26 until May 30 and has a 3.50 ERA in 49 career starts.
Wheeler is younger than Harvey or deGrom, and he's talented enough that he was regularly ranked ahead of both when they were coming up through the Mets system. He may not be the best pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery in 2016—Yu Darvish is expected to be back with the Texas Rangers sometime in May—but he could end up being the most significant.
Wheeler gives the Mets a dream rotation, but he also gives them options. If he comes back strong, and if the rest of the Mets starters are healthy and pitching as well as they did in 2015, they could move Colon to the bullpen or trade him.
Or they could trade Wheeler, who had value even when he was rehabbing, and would no doubt have even more value now.
Or they could think even bigger and see what kind of young star they could get for Harvey, who by that time will have just 2.5 years to go to free agency.
Harvey came back from Tommy John surgery last year and pitched so well that the biggest concern was his innings limit. Wheeler's midseason timetable should eliminate that issue for him, but the timing of his surgery (March 25) means he wouldn't be returning 17 months post-surgery, as Harvey did.
The Mets' rotation depth allows them to be cautious with Wheeler—a late-July return would put him at 16 months after surgery—but the pitcher himself may have trouble being patient. Already, he had to sit on the sideline while his teammates went to the World Series.
"Of course I wanted to be there with them, I wanted to help," Wheeler told Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News. "So, I look forward to next year and getting back there with them."
Wheeler was supposed to play a big part in the Mets' transformation into winners. He came to the organization in general manager Sandy Alderson's first big trade, a one-for-one deal in 2011 that sent Carlos Beltran to the San Francisco Giants. Wheeler was just 21 then, but he was almost immediately talked about as a reason for Mets fans to hope.
The Mets were still more hope than reality last July, but after the Milwaukee trade fell through (as did another one that would have sent Wheeler to the Cincinnati Reds for Jay Bruce), Wheeler reached out to Alderson with a personal plea to stay around.
"I told him I know it's a business and he has a job to do, but I'd really like to be here because of what's about to happen," Wheeler told Marc Carig of Newsday a few days later. "I figured [the phone call] was the best way to get it across that I wanted to stay and be a part of this team's winning future."
He has stayed, at least for now, and he gives the Mets an uncommon luxury. No, you can't have too much pitching, but perhaps with Wheeler on the way back, the Mets will have enough.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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