The Phillies Can Survive Without Zack Wheeler
Even with Wheeler out, Philly has the rotation to win it all — if the bats and bullpen keep doing their part.
Last Friday evening, the Philadelphia Phillies were looking to start the second weekend of a long road trip by getting back to their winning ways again, usually a good bet with ace Zack Wheeler on the hill. Wheeler had gone just 5 innings in his last outing,1 laboring at times through 3 walks and allowing a HR — as his average fastball velocity was down to a season-low 94.2 mph — but he still struck out 7 and ended up getting the win. Against Washington, though, he once again walked multiple batters, allowed his fifth HR in the span of 3 starts — despite improved pitch velo — and was pulled again after 5 innings, leaving the game tied.
While the Phillies won, Wheeler complained of shoulder “heaviness” after the game, and doctors quickly diagnosed him with a blood clot in the right upper extremity — potentially caused by thoracic outlet syndrome. Surgeons removed the clot on Monday, but Philadelphia placed Wheeler on the injured list with no timetable to return, and manager Rob Thomson said he didn’t know if his star pitcher would throw again this season.
At the time, Wheeler had been the sixth-most valuable pitcher — and 13th-most valuable player overall — in MLB this season by Wins Above Replacement, tracking for a 6.2-win campaign that would have matched last year’s output perfectly and continued a remarkable six-year stretch of dominance for the righthander since joining Philadelphia in 2020. Instead of Wheeler leading them in October, however, a pitching-reliant World Series contender will likely be without arguably its best starter for the postseason, another twist of fate for a Phillies era that is running out of time to cash in on its immense potential.
And yet, what if the Phillies’ rotation is still plenty strong enough to win without him — as long as the rest of the team keeps holding up their end of the bargain?
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Most teams would indeed be devastated by the loss of a pitcher as elite as Wheeler. His aforementioned WAR helped Philly be on pace for a league-best 22.0 wins of value from its starters per 162 games, well clear of the No. 2 Cincinnati Reds at 18.7. But Wheeler was far from the only source powering the Phillies’ dominant rotation. Here’s how he fit alongside the WAR per 162 team games for the team’s other leading starters:
By WAR, Wheeler hasn’t even been the Phillies’ most valuable starter this season — that honor belongs to the perpetually underrated lefty Cristopher Sanchez, who keeps getting better every year. Between him, Ranger Suarez and Jesus Luzardo, Philadelphia is the only team in baseball whose fourth-most valuable starter has been worth at least 3.5 WAR per 162; the team with the next-most valuable fourth starter is Cincinnati’s Brady Singer at 2.7 WAR/162.
That’s why you can take away Wheeler’s 6.2 WAR/162 and Philly would still have a Top-3 rotation leaguewide:
And if we’re looking ahead to the playoffs, a rotation led by the triumvirate of Sanchez, Suarez and Luzardo may be all a championship run requires. Going back to 2010, when sabermetric pitching strategies truly began taking over MLB, I found that roughly 81 percent of a World Series team’s total postseason starts were made by just its Top 3 pitchers (ranked by playoff starts). While 15 percent of starts were made by the No. 4 starter — with about 3 percent going to all others — a strong three-headed rotation can get you most of what you need in October.
And the Phillies do have potential at the No. 4 slot as well. There’s Taijuan Walker, who’s been doing a fine enough job in that slot (or what would be it after dropping Wheeler from the mix) this year, though his underlying peripherals are mediocre. And then there’s the real wild-card, former staff ace Aaron Nola — who just returned from a lengthy IL stint of his own and has had the worst numbers of his career in 2025, but is just a season removed from a 3.8 WAR performance with much better metrics. If he gets right, it would help Philly cover Wheeler’s loss even more.
The bigger concern might be the rest of a roster that ranks 12th in batting, 21st in fielding and 15th in bullpen WAR. The rotation is so central to Philly’s success that if it does slip without Wheeler, the team starts to look like nothing special pretty fast.
But even there, the Phillies have been improving their flaws as the season has progressed. Here are the monthly splits for their OPS at the plate and their relief-pitching earned run average by month, so far in 2025:
With Bryce Harper, Brandon Marsh and Alec Bohm all back in the lineup, the Phillies are scoring the ninth-most runs in MLB this month, and the trade deadline acquisition of Jhoan Duran (0 ER in 6 appearances as of Tuesday afternoon) has shored up a bullpen that’s improved in just about every successive month of the season. (Plus, José Alvarado was just activated from his 80-game PED suspension, giving Philly another bullpen arm — for the regular season, at least.)2
You never want to lose your staff ace, obviously. The Phillies’ World Series chances went down the moment Wheeler’s status for the rest of the season became doubtful.3 But if any team can survive the loss of a Cy Young contender, it’s the one with baseball’s deepest rotation — and just enough improvement elsewhere to stay dangerous in October.
Filed under: Baseball
Which itself had been pushed back due to shoulder soreness, though an MRI returned no concerns at the time.
Alvarado is still not eligible to play in the postseason.
And just look at how his Polymarket Cy Young odds have dropped like a rock since the start of the month.