PHILADELPHIA – Zack Wheeler started the final baseball game of 2022.
When the Phillies made their miracle run from last wild card team to pennant winner, Wheeler, pitching in his first postseason, was dominant. In the first five starts of a long October, batters hit just .151 ahead of him. In 30⅓ innings, he had a 2.67 ERA.
The final game was hardly unusual: When he left in the sixth inning, he had a 1-0 lead with a few runners on base. Then, when the bullpen gave up a home run, he was tagged for two earned runs on three hits. Against the mighty Houston Astros, that was enough to put Wheeler’s team on the wrong side of celebration for the first time in the postseason.
He was one of two pitchers to start the final game of 2022 – and the only one to suffer a loss. A bitter end to a brilliant season.
“I don’t know why he had a bad taste,” his catcher JT Realmuto said 11 months later about the suggestion that Wheeler was reflecting on that World Series loss. “He really threw the ball that day. He did his job.”
Now is not the time to remember last year, but Realmuto is right: The problem that night in Houston was that the Phillies’ impressive bats didn’t show up. And an even more important point: Zack Wheeler did his job. He does that as well as always.
Within less than a week in December 2019, Stephen Strasburg, Gerrit Cole and Wheeler all signed major free agent contracts. A nine-year term was $324 million, a seven-year term was $245 million, and a five-year term was $118 million. Underpaying for production is not a virtue, but these numbers reflect expectations at the time. The man who signed the smallest player in the bunch earned a decisive playoff victory in Philadelphia on Tuesday – and what’s impressive about it is how unremarkable it is.
The mess of Strasburg’s perhaps impending retirement this season underscores how his contract (seven years, $245 million) turned out to be a misguided failure of epic proportions. Cole (nine years, $324 million) has been the rare player on the Yankees’ roster who hasn’t disappointed in recent seasons. He’s racked up Down Ballot Cy Young votes every year since signing with New York and will likely finally win the award this season.
But in the four seasons since those signings, no one — not Cole, not Corbin Burnes, not Max Scherzer, or anyone who won a Cy Young Award during that time — has been a more valuable starting player than Wheeler, according to FanGraphs.
“Wheeler’s contract was an absolute steal for the Phillies,” Realmuto said, “because he was so productive.”
While Wheeler earned just a single All-Star appearance and a second and 12th Cy Young finish, he has posted a 3.06 ERA and a 2.91 FIP in nearly 630 regular-season innings — plus the 2022 postseason .
And on Tuesday in Philadelphia to kick off a new playoff run for the boisterous team that can’t say no one saw them coming this time: “I thought tonight his stuff was as good or better than any other start that “all year long,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said.
“The first two innings,” Realmuto said, “was the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
Wheeler needed just 10 pitches to get through the first inning and another 10 to get through the second inning. Sometime around the fourth day, Rhys Hoskins – the wounded heart and soul of this team – said his wife texted him and asked, “What the hell is a sweeper?” Presumably because the show wouldn’t stop talking about it to wonder who Wheeler was dealing with.
In total, Wheeler threw 100 pitches and struck out eight in 6⅔. He led his team, and this time the Phillies went one better, defeating the Miami Marlins 4-1 and winning the first game of their best-of-three wild card series.
Granted, this guy – one of the consistently great pitchers of the last four years – should have been completely out of contention against a Marlins lineup that scored the fifth-fewest runs in MLB this season. But the other team is trying too, and they are good enough to get here. The postseason is often decided by great pitchers being knocked over — and by humble aces rising to the occasion.
In the regular season, Wheeler’s fastball averaged 95.8 miles per hour. In Game 1, he reached a speed of 98.6 mph.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he said afterward about how he performed at his best in nearly 200 innings in 2023. “It must be the atmosphere and the adrenaline that is in him. As soon as I stepped foot out of the dugout to stretch out in the bullpen, the crowd went crazy and I got goosebumps.”
It’s too early to talk about the unique decibel levels at Citizens Bank Park, the frantic fervor of unwelcome fans that opposing players still remember nearly a year later. This part of the Phillies’ postseason history is just beginning. But while some wild card series have opened to historically small crowds, 45,662 spectators showed up on Tuesday, hungrier than ever after coming so close last season.
And knowing what to expect this time around didn’t diminish the players’ appreciation for it. If it fueled them last year, it can do so again.
“I think it’s a better team,” Nick Castellanos – himself, he was the impetus for the Phillies’ wild swagger – said about the club in 2023 compared to 2022. “But I think more importantly, it’s a more experienced team. You can’t fake these experiences. And no matter how talented you are, you can’t repeat a moment like the postseason – playing here in the stadium and feeling the excitement of the crowd.
“The fact that we have all walked this path before and are now starting this journey again is very present for us. We’re very focused on what we need to do.”
The theme of the postseason in Philadelphia is unabashed noise. Call it boldness or audacity or disgusting; Baseball is a spectacle here. But at the center of it all on the first night of the 2023 playoffs was a man whose incredible success has gone far too unnoticed.
“I think he likes to stay under the radar,” Realmuto said of Wheeler. “Of course he likes to go out and dominate, but he’s not a guy who’s looking for attention or accolades.
“He just goes out and does his job. He’s very quiet about it.”