He’s the best pitcher in baseball and, if he keeps it up, will be better than anyone else in team history.
The numbers are ridiculous.
After Monday night’s eight shutout innings in the Phillies’ 4-0 win over the Padres, Zack Wheeler’s month of June came to a close. It was a historically great season for a pitcher who never ceases to be excellent.
In five starts, Wheeler went 2-1, led all of baseball with a 0.58 ERA, struck out 55 hitters and walked eight in 31.0 innings. Now in his sixth season as a Phillies, Wheeler is having his best campaign ever. His 2.27 ERA significantly lower than his previous best, last season’s 2.57. He is striking out a career-high 11.44 batters per nine, has the best strikeout-to-walk rate of his career, with opponents hitting a career-best .187 against him.
In his age-35 season, Wheeler is on track to finally win his first-ever Cy Young Award, although teammates Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez may have something to say about that before the season is through. Paul Skenes, too.
We’ve reached the point in Wheeler’s Phillies career where it’s fair to wonder how great he has been, compared to other pitchers in franchise history. Certainly, there have been pitchers who have spent more time in Philadelphia, thrown more innings in a Phils uniform, and “won” more games. But ever since he tugged on a Phillies uniform during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he has not ceased to be one of the best pitchers in baseball.
Steve Carlton will undoubtedly go down as the greatest pitcher in Phillies history. It will be impossible for anyone to catch him. But what about other legends like Robin Roberts, Jim Bunning, Curt Schilling, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and even his current teammate, Aaron Nola? How do Wheeler’s accomplishments compare to them?
Wheeler will fail to measure up in terms of pure counting stats, given his shorter tenure with the franchise. So we’re going to look at rate statistics and see how he measures up.
His .657 winning percentage ranks second behind Grover Alexander’s .676. He leads all Phils pitchers in WHIP, 1.017. He’s second all-time in hits-per-innings (7.113), behind George McQuillan, who pitched parts of six seasons in the Phillies in the early 1900s. He leads all Phillies pitchers in K/9 (9.948), just ahead of Vince Velasquez (!!!) and Aaron Nola. He’s second behind Cliff Lee in K/BB ratio. He also leads all Phillies in Adjusted ERA+ (147), ahead of McQuillan’s 146 and Grover Alexander’s 140.
In terms of his generation, Wheeler has been more dominant for longer than Halladay, Lee, Hamels and even Schilling. But in assessing Wheeler’s true place among Phillies legends, one must also account for his postseason heroics. There has been no greater big-game, postseason performer than Zack Wheeler.
In 11 career postseason starts (12 appearances), Wheeler has pitched 70.1 innings and allowed a 2.18 ERA, with a 77-to-14 K-BB ratio. He has pitched six or more innings in nine of his 11 playoff starts and allowed two runs or fewer in 11. The most runs he’s ever given up in a playoff game was four, in Game 1 of the 2022 World Series, and three, in Game 2 of the 2022 NLDS against Atlanta.
Only Hamels and Carlton started more playoff games (13 each), with Hamels’ 3.09 ERA and Carlton’s 3.32 both very good, but nearly what Wheeler’s is. His 77 playoff strikeouts are tied with Hamels for most in franchise history, and Wheeler has walked seven fewer hitters. Both have nine quality starts. His .151 batting average allowed in the playoffs is a franchise-best, better than Halladay’s .167, and his WHIP (0.73) is slightly better than Halladay’s, too (0.74).
Given the different eras and the fact Wheeler did not sign with the Phils until his age-30 season, it’s remarkable to even have this discussion. This run of dominance in his 30s has rarely been seen before. Former general manager Matt Klentak didn’t do a lot of things right, but his greatest success is believing Wheeler’s underlying metrics signaled a potential ace lurking in the shadows.
So while Steve Carlton will forever be on the Mount Rushmore of Phillies legends, Wheeler has already established himself as perhaps the second-best pitcher in franchise history.