Michael Baron, MetsBlog.com:

Wheeler was great until the fifth inning. He had a dominant fastball with a hard and heavy slider working down and in to the left-handed hitters. He was consistently between 93-96 mph with his fastball and his slider sat between 87-89 mph, and Syracuse clearly had trouble seeing the ball out of Wheeler’s hand early. He allowed a hit in the first inning and then nothing until the fifth inning and had a ton of strikeouts in between. But he also worked a lot of deep counts, which resulted in a few walks and a very high pitch count in a very short period of time.

One of the things that contributed to Wheeler’s high pitch count was that he only used his fastball and slider. As Matt Harvey told me last week, pitchers need to have more variety at Triple-A to be successful. Despite the seven strikeouts, he had a lot of trouble putting the other hitters away which made his pitch count rise quickly. The lack of variety might have contributed to that issue. And when he lost command of his fastball in the fifth inning, he only had the one other pitch to turn to, leaving him in a very bad position. I would expect Wheeler to begin incorporating his other pitches as he rounds out his season.Nonetheless, it was exciting to see Wheeler pitch at a higher level, and he showed electric stuff. With that said, he clearly still has work to do before being considered for the Major League rotation. But, for what it’s worth, Harvey had a similar experience earlier in the season, and he got to the Major Leagues after four months in Triple-A…