Zack Wheeler told Mike Vorkunov of the Star Ledger he asked the Mets not to employ infield shifts during the 2014 season.
“I don’t want to piss anybody off but, honestly, I don’t like it,” Wheeler told Vorkunov. “Teams are starting to be more analytical these days. So I hate to say that numbers don’t lie because I don’t like analytics all that much but I’m not the boss here. I really can’t control it. They know where I stand on that.”
According to Vorkunov, Wheeler told the Mets an infield shift doesn’t play to his pitching arsenal.
“He was right,” Terry Collins told Vorkunov. “We said ‘Listen, we’re not going to take the shift away. We’re just going to alter it a little bit because the numbers tell us they’re still going to hit the ball over here. We made a little adjustment. His argument was legitimate.”
64 of the 86 hits left-handed hitters had against Wheeler in 2014 were hit either up the middle or to the opposite field. Lefties hit .259 with a .743 OPS against Wheeler last season – he went 11-11 with a 3.54 ERA in 185 1/3 innings over 32 starts.
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