Zack Wheeler was not at his best on Monday night.
He had issued three walks by the first batter of the fourth inning. It was only the seventh time he’d walked three or more batters in a game since the start of 2025, and he had yet to record an out in the fourth. He’d had run the count full four times by the end of that inning and his pitch count climbed to 75 by the time he recorded his 12th out of the night.
All of those things make it even more impressive that Wheeler’s final stat line for the night
was six scoreless innings with nine strikeouts and just two hits allowed. It’s become almost a detriment to his standing that things like this are expected of the now 36-year-old right hander, who continuously makes the remarkable seem mundane. Wheeler is the rare breed of pitcher that can not have his best stuff and still turn in an outing that would make most other starters jealous on their best day.
The tone for this outing was set right at the start of the game. Wheeler couldn’t command his fastball in the first inning, with 5 of the 11 heaters he threw landing outside of the strike zone. Three of those were in the first at-bat of the game against Liam Hicks, who singled on the fourth fastball he saw despite it being just a hair outside of the zone away.
Next up, it was the sweeper’s turn to fail Wheeler. He threw two to the second batter of the game Otto Lopez, who took both of them for balls way outside along with two fastballs and a splitter that missed the zone badly, earning Lopez a walk. Wheeler already had two baserunners and had thrown just 3 of his 11 pitches for strikes.
But the third at-bat delivered a key moment for the rest of the game. Wheeler started off Kyle Stowers with a fastball low and in but well inside the strike zone for a foul. He then located a splitter at the bottom of the zone for a whiff before getting Stowers to fly out on a sharply hit ball to Brandon Marsh.
That well located splitter turned Wheeler’s night around, as he would go on to throw the pitch 18 total times on the night, six of which generated swings and misses including this one to collect his ninth and final strikeout of the night.
On a night when he was slow to get a feel for his fastball and his sweeper had its worst chase percentage (12.5%) of the season, it was Wheeler’s rarely used splitter that helped him turn a shaky start into another run of the mill dominant performance. He essentially abandoned the sweeper, the breaking pitch he typically uses the most, and turned to the splitter, a pitch he only reintroduced into his arsenal in 2024, to keep hitters off balance until he found the fastball. In turn, the splitter generated 6 whiffs on 10 swings and helped Wheeler settle into the game where he eventually found his typical pinpoint fastball command and utilized it in conjunction with the splitter.
This all may sound rather mundane, but it isn’t. It’s incredibly difficult for a pitcher to go into a game not locating his fastball and struggling to get whiffs on his best breaking pitch and yet still find a way to give a competitive start, let alone a dominant one like Wheeler did on Monday. If you were to just look at the box score, you would have a hard time believing that this was a Zack Wheeler who was struggling to find it. But Wheeler himself even expressed that he wasn’t at his best.
Wheeler has been so dominant since coming to Philadelphia that it’s sometimes hard to not take him for granted. But that idea took a dent last offseason when Wheeler underwent thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. No one quite knew what he would be coming off of such a procedure at all, let alone at 35, now 36 years of age. Then, alarm bells started to ring in April when Wheeler was getting hit around in Triple-A while rehabbing and his fastball was only sitting around 94 MPH.
Yet here we sit in mid-June, and Wheeler is just as good as he was before the surgery, if not better. He’s made 10 starts so far in 2026 and has a record of 6-1 with an ERA of 2.01. The Phillies are 8-2 in games started by Wheeler, as he’s been a large part of their turnaround under interim manager Don Mattingly. His velocity, once an early spring source of dread, has steadily risen as every start goes by, now averaging 95.3 MPH on the season after sitting around 96 in his start Monday.
Who knows what’s in store for the rest of Wheeler’s season. Could he possibly creep his way back into the Cy Young race, solidifying his near-stunning rebound from major surgery, or will he run out of gas as the innings mount and come back down to a depressing reality? If Monday’s start is any evidence, maybe there should be some faith that he’ll figure it out no matter what comes.
