It Appears We Have Ourselves A Little Verbal Kerfuffle Escalating Between Zack Wheeler And Brodie Van Wagenen
Oh hell yeah, lets roll baby! I can only watch so many videos of players long-tossing and hearing stories about guys entering camp in the best shape of their lives before my eyes gloss over with boredom at Spring Training. So seeing things get a little caliente between a former Met and a soon-to-be former Mets GM is exactly what the doctor ordered. Name something more relatable than someone calling out their former boss. You can't. That's the type of dynamic that fueled Stone Cold Steve Austin's entire rise.
Now I'm sure some baseball purists will say you should never bite the hand that once fed you or speak ill of someone that worked his ass off for your franchise and probably has a good amount of buddies still dressing in your team's uniforms in the locker room. But I say fuck that. Neither of what these guys said could possibly be perceived as anything but the truth.
Wheeler was asked about the offer everyone on the planet knew wasn't coming with this chooch in charge.
“Obviously everything starts at the top and it filters down,” Wheeler said. “Whether it be somebody’s fault or not, it starts at the top and goes down. Maybe the top gives them the OK but lower down they don’t want to do something. Or maybe up top, they don’t give you the opportunity to do something but everybody else wants to do it. That’s kind of how it was there at certain points. Everything was kind of jumpy because certain people would want something, others wouldn’t. I don’t think everyone was on the same page.”
Wheeler signing with a division rival got swept under the rug pretty quickly because it happened right as news of Steve Cohen buying the team broke, which ensured the Mets would never lose a free agent they wanted to keep again.
HOWEVAH, anyone that watched Wheeler's starts or just looked at his splits the last three seasons knows that Brodie was spitting as close to the truth as you will get out of his snake oil salesman ass.
If your agent-turned-GM can't use stats to make a point, what's the point of hiring an agent as your GM. No seriously, I'm still trying to figure it out. Wheeler made a lot of money with those last two second halves. There's a chance that contract looks bad as early as this season or the Mets get motherfucked by it in the division immediately like they did when Daniel Murphy went to the Nationals. But as of today, I think it's fair to say both of these guys are right.
Anyway, I hope this continues to escalate because Mets-Phillies always has a little extra juice when both teams are decent and jawing at each other. Maybe Joe Girardi can mention how he chose the Philly job since he knew the Wilpons would never hit his demands or Brodie can say stats in binders are for nerds. I don't know. I'm just happy Spring Training isn't just baseball writers talking about how nice the weather is and every person still yelling about the 2017 Astros.