Zack Wheeler is 36 years old, and he had a rib near his throwing shoulder removed last fall during thoracic outlet decompression surgery. He needed months to get ready to retake the mound in 2026, missing Opening Day in a slow buildup.
And yet, since returning to the Phillies’ rotation on April 25, Wheeler has been as good as ever. Arguably, he’s been better than ever.
He’ll continue his dominant 2026 campaign on Tuesday against the reigning champion Dodgers in what should be appointment viewing. First pitch is slated for 6:40 p.m. ET at Citizens Bank Park, with Los Angeles sending lefty Justin Wrobleski to the hill.
Wheeler’s 2.13 ERA across 15 starts this season would be the best of his 12-year career. Since Philadelphia started 9-19 and fired manager Rob Thomson on April 28, the club has the second-best record in baseball at 47-26. Wheeler’s 10-1 mark (and 13 total Phillies wins in his starts) has been key, to say the least.
Wheeler actually kept the rib that was removed in his surgery. That’s as good a symbol as any of the righty’s intensity -- the same intensity that has allowed him to somehow keep getting better in the later stages of his career.
Let’s dive into how Wheeler has stayed so good after such an uncertain end to his 2025 season.
Manipulating the baseball
Back in May, we highlighted how Wheeler’s arm slot has dropped significantly over the years. That, paired with a newly varied arsenal, has helped him silence left-handed hitters this year, long one of the few flaws in his game. Southpaws have hit just .181 with a .585 OPS against him.
While he actually credited the slot change to overall mechanics changes rather than a dedicated focus on his arm angle, it has seemingly led to more movement on many of his offerings than he’s had since Statcast tracking began in 2017.
His four-seamer is getting more arm-side run (11.8 inches), his curveball is both getting glove-side break (13.7 inches) and induced drop (11.3 inches) at all-time highs, his sinker is tied with 2025 for the most arm-side movement (17.5 inches), and his sweeper -- debuted in 2023 -- is breaking a whole four inches further to the glove side than ever before (17.6 inches total).
Racking up K’s
Wheeler has pretty much always been a great-to-elite strikeout pitcher since joining the Phillies in 2020, but he took it to a new high in 2025 (33.3% K rate), and he’s not far behind that mark in 2026 (30.4%).
Wheeler is also getting hitters to chase outside of the strike zone at his highest clip since 2017, a 36.3% mark that ranks in the 95th percentile across MLB. That hasn’t happened by accident, with Wheeler throwing pitches in the strike zone almost 7% less frequently (42.6%) than his next-lowest mark in the shortened 2020 season (49.1%).
As you’d probably guess, Wheeler’s 30.3% whiff rate is also strong (83rd percentile) and is the second-highest of his career, trailing just 2025.
Keep ‘em off balance
While we can’t exactly quantify the idea of “deception,” Wheeler certainly has it. Not only does he have opponents whiffing and striking out so much, they’re doing so in ugly fashion.
Introduced this year, Statcast’s miss distance and swing timing metrics paint Wheeler in excellent light.
His splitter -- reintroduced in 2024 and now upped to 15% usage -- has induced a “flawed swing” on 28% of opponents’ hacks, the most of any Wheeler pitch since bat tracking began in 2023 and tied for sixth-most of any pitch in MLB this season. The pitch has additionally been worth 2.5 Run Value per 100 offerings, second-best behind only David Bednar among MLB splitters (min. 200 thrown).
(A flawed swing is essentially when the batter has whiffed and done nothing “right” in the process, missing the center of the barrel, mistiming his swing and missing under or over the pitch).
Furthermore, remember the sweeper that’s breaking more than ever? Wheeler is inducing an average miss distance of 7.3 inches on the pitch. If it qualified, that would tie for 12th among any MLB pitch this season.
Quality of contact
With as much as Wheeler strikes batters out (including double-digit K’s in his past three starts), it’s easy to forget that hitters do occasionally put the ball in play against him. But he’s been quite good whenever that happens, too.
The veteran is right around his career averages in hard-hit rate, barrel rate and average exit velocity -- all well below league average. What catches the eye is a 46.2% ground-ball rate, his highest since 2022 by a wide margin.
The splitter (noticing a trend?) gets a lot of credit for that, seeing an 11.8% increase in ground-ball rate from 2025. Wheeler’s cutter, however, has also seen an 8.6% increase in putting the ball on the ground.
Even in front of a less-than-stellar Phillies infield, the uptick in grounders has helped Wheeler put together the best batting average on balls in play of his career at .239.
In conclusion, Zack Wheeler -- down a rib in 2026 -- is pitching at what looks like the highest level of his 12-year career, one that has seen him finish as the runner-up for the Cy Young on two separate occasions.
And it’s no fluke that the 36-year-old keeps getting better. He’s meticulously tinkered with his delivery and arsenal, and the results are backing up the behind-the-scenes work.