How the Phillies and Zack Wheeler got him back to feeling like his 2021 self on the mound

Wheeler has felt off for much of the season and got to work with his coaches to find out why. They started by looking back at his career season.

Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler is 11-7 with a 3.07 ERA this season.Read moreCHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

by Alex Coffey

Published Aug. 24, 2022, 3:02 p.m. ET

For most of this season, Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler has felt off. He’s said so after some of his better starts and after some of his worst. It’s been a constant. He was never able to articulate, at least to the media, what “off” meant; Wheeler insisted he felt fine physically, but that something just wasn’t right.

A few days before the All-Star break, Wheeler decided to search for answers. He asked Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham and assistant pitching coach Brian Kaplan to figure out what he was doing differently. They used his 2021 season as a reference point — not only because it was the best season of his career, but also the season in which he felt most in rhythm with his body.

About a week later, Cotham and Kaplan brought Wheeler two still images of his right arm, just as he was bringing the ball back. One was slightly bent and the other was straight. Then, they showed him his release points with the slightly bent right elbow, and the straight right elbow, and suddenly it all clicked for Wheeler.

“When you have that little bend, your arm wants to go out, instead of going straight [when you release the ball],” Wheeler said. “When your arm is bent, you can’t bend it any more, really, so it has to come out. And that causes weird spin on your offspeed and on your four-seam fastball.”

The two pitching coaches had another suggestion. They realized Wheeler wasn’t staying behind the fastball. When he would go out of his windup, he was rushing a bit. Instead of stepping up and down and out, he stepped up and down and around.

Wheeler said he’s always had trouble staying back. He used to do what he calls the “Kershaw drill,” because he saw the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw do it once before a game. The “Kershaw drill” would help Wheeler stay back, but he got away from it this season.

“When [Kershaw] goes, he drops his leg, he stays there for a second, and then he goes,” Wheeler said. “I saw him doing it and I was like, ‘I could do that to help me try to stay back.’ I kind of got away from it, but I told Caleb and he really likes it, so now I’m doing it again. It makes sense for me. I don’t throw like Kershaw, but starting off a bullpen session or even a game just doing that, making yourself think about where you need to be.”

With these two adjustments in tow, Wheeler and Cotham got to work. After a few bullpen sessions, Wheeler felt ready to bring the adjustments into a game. On Aug. 14, against the Mets at Citi Field, he debuted his new (or rather, his 2021) mechanics. His line left a lot to be desired — six innings, nine hits, six earned runs, one walk in a 6-0 loss — but most of the hits he gave up were weak contact. The velocity on his fastball ticked up a full mile per hour, to 98.3, and his sinker hit 97 and 96 mph multiple times.

Wheeler said it was the best he’d felt all year, despite the six earned runs. He again used those two adjustments against the Mets on Saturday at home in an 8-2 loss. He induced even less hard contact, his fastball hit 97 mph a few times, and was sitting at 96 mph.

The changes Wheeler made were subtle. Even interim manager Rob Thomson said he didn’t notice a difference between Wheeler’s last two starts and his other starts in 2022. But the changes were effective.

“It might be small adjustments, and nobody can ever see it, but I know what it is and I can feel it,” Wheeler said. “I really felt behind the ball [in those two starts]. My hand was behind the ball, I had a true four-seam fastball, and I was spinning the ball well because I was staying back and behind the ball instead of rushing and coming around the ball. Last year, when I was really dialed in, basically the whole season, there was a few times where I had in a bullpen, tweak this and fix it real quick, and it was like like [snaps fingers]. And I carried it out into my next start. A lot of that would be about staying behind the fastball, so I know where it’s going to go every single time.

“If I’m going to go glove side, it’s going to be there, it’s not going to come back. Because that’s what I used to do. My fastball used to come back a little bit. I want it to be straight and true, so I know where It’s going to go.”

It’s natural for a pitcher to develop bad habits over time, but in Wheeler’s case, some of these habits came from a desire to throw harder. Wheeler was averaging 94.9 mph on his fastball in his first two starts of the season, which affected his mentality on the mound.

“With these small adjustments in the bullpen, I kind of got back to my old mechanics,” Wheeler said. “I think at the beginning of the year, I was trying to throw hard, because I wasn’t throwing hard. So my brain was telling my body to throw harder, and so I was kind of like crunched up, bent over, in like a power position, and trying to come out of it and throw hard, and it just wasn’t happening. And other stuff happens because you’re doing that.”

His pitches weren’t moving like they were supposed to. His body was hurting in spots it hadn’t hurt before. And, like Cotham and Kaplan noticed, Wheeler wasn’t staying behind the ball, and his right elbow was bent as his arm came back. But now, Wheeler feels like he’s closer to a version of his 2021 self.

“I haven’t tried to throw hard in a while,” said Wheeler, whose next scheduled start is Friday against the Pirates. “But I’m also perfecting my motion to where it was last year, basically. I know what my motion is supposed to be. Because you know what you’re supposed to do at this point in your career. I need to be here at this point, here at this point, so it was all about kind of getting back to that.”