{"id":119816,"date":"2026-04-21T19:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T23:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=119816"},"modified":"2026-04-21T19:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T23:04:12","slug":"zack-wheeler-returning-to-phillies-rotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/21\/zack-wheeler-returning-to-phillies-rotation\/","title":{"rendered":"Zack Wheeler Returning To Phillies Rotation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to Charlotte Varnes of The Athletic, Zack Wheeler will be returning to the Philadelphia Phillies rotation on April 25. Wheeler has been out since August of last season with thoracic outlet syndrome that was related to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/08\/16\/phillies-pitcher-zack-wheeler-injured-list-blood-clot\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">a blood clot<\/a>. In five minor league rehab starts Wheeler recorded a 0-1 record with a 5.85 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP with a 4.52 FIP as well. Wheeler also recorded a 4.60 K\/BB rate and a 1.35 HR\/9 allowed rate. Opposing batters had a .257 average and a .333 BABIP against Wheeler during his rehab assignment. Wheeler saw a velocity decrease across the board compared to the 2025 regular season in his three Triple-A rehab outings. Of the four pitches Wheeler throws the cutter saw the highest velocity decrease relative to 2025.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Zack Wheeler will return in Atlanta on Saturday. Painter will go Friday, then Wheeler, then Nola on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Charlotte Varnes (@charlottevarnes) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/charlottevarnes\/status\/2046701624958095729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 21, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Last season Wheeler had a 10-5 record with a 2.71 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP with a 3.00 FIP in 24 starts. Wheeler added 16 quality starts and a 5.91 K\/BB rate. Additionally Wheeler had a 1.14 HR\/9 allowed rate last season. Opposing batters had a .197 average and a .267 BABIP against Wheeler in 2025. Furthermore Wheeler had a career best 82.4% left-on-base percentage last season. Wheeler ranked in the top five in fWAR, quality starts, WHIP, K\/BB rate and WPA among qualified starting pitchers at the time he went on the injured list. Despite missing the last month and change of the regular season Wheeler still finished in ninth place in NL Cy Young Award voting last season.<\/p>\n<h2>Wheeler Returning Will Give Phillies Rotation A Boost<\/h2>\n<h3>What It Means For The Pitching Staff<\/h3>\n<p>Taijuan Walker will now presumably <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/phillies\/news\/taijuan-walker-to-follow-opener-then-move-to-bullpen\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">move to the bullpen<\/a> long term. Walker is scheduled to pitch following an opener on April 22 against the Chicago Cubs. The Phillies have not announced who will open for Walker yet. Walker <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/22\/phillies-move-taijuan-walker-bullpen-full-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">moved to the bullpen<\/a> last season as well after starting in the rotation because of injuries. However, Walker would later find himself back in the starting rotation. Walker has a 1-3 record with a 9.16 ERA and a 2.04 WHIP with a 7.37 FIP in four starts this season. To add to that Walker has a 1.60 K\/BB rate and a 2.89 HR\/9 allowed rate. Walker has a 24.75 ERA in the first inning of games this season which is why the club is having an opener for Walker. Last season Walker had a 4.25 ERA as a starting pitcher and a 3.15 ERA as a relief pitcher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"a61405551f80e72f675225f083759bb9\" image-id=\"fwuQofl3GGzW\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 3370px; aspect-ratio: 3370\/2344;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<h3>Expectations Upon Comeback<\/h3>\n<p>Wheeler is not going to be at NL Cy Young Award contending level form immediately upon his return. It will take some time for Wheeler to regain velocity. Additionally the five rehab starts for Wheeler saw him pitch 20 total innings. That is not an extremely large sample size to judge off of for someone who has been out as long as Wheeler has. Cristopher S\u00e1nchez has emerged as an ace while Wheeler has been sidelined as well. With that being said Jes\u00fas Luzardo is off to a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/16\/phillies-pitcher-has-concerning-trend\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">concerning start<\/a> and Aaron Nola has noticeably declined on the mound. Meanwhile Andrew Painter is off to a decent start to his rookie campaign. Wheeler returning will bring some stability to the Phillies rotation.<\/p>\n<p>Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Charlotte Varnes of The Athletic, Zack Wheeler will be returning to the Philadelphia Phillies rotation on April 25. Wheeler has been out since August of last season with thoracic outlet syndrome that was related to a blood clot. In five minor league rehab starts Wheeler recorded a 0-1 record with a 5.85 ERA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4566,"featured_media":87767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,23],"tags":[1069,28573,3425,701,683],"class_list":["post-119816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-phillies","tag-aaron-nola","tag-cristopher-sanchez","tag-jesus-luzardo","tag-taijuan-walker","tag-zack-wheeler"],"modified_by":"Ben Rosen, Staff Writer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119820,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119816\/revisions\/119820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}