Zack Wheeler: A "What If?" Hall of Fame Path?

Zack Wheeler has quietly been one of the best pitchers in baseball over his career. Outside of a 2017 season in which he was pitching for the first time in two years post Tommy John surgery, Wheeler hasn’t posted a year with an era above 3.96. A dependable co-ace alongside Aaron Nola for the Phillies, and helping a startup 2015 Mets team march to the world series, Wheeler has displayed an ability to pitch like the artform that it is. Throwing upper 90s fastballs and sinkers with a hard slider, he’s been able to dominate the Majors year in and year out in a tough NL East. At age 32, his career numbers are starting to become more indicative of the ace he really is. Boasting a 3.45 career ERA, 1.185 WHIP, 115 ERA+, 29.4 WAR, and a 24.5 K% against a 7.1 BB%, wheeler has fairly impressive numbers so far. His accolades hurt his case as an all timer, as he has only 1 All Star appearance to his name and minimal playoff stats. Trying to provide a benchmark for Hall of Fame candidacy with no Cy Young is difficult as few pitchers have reached the hall without the award. Since the Cy Young award was introduced in 1956 only 8 starting pitchers have made the Hall without the Award (Robin Roberts made the Hall but played his prime before the award’s invention). Those pitchers include Bert Blyleven, Jim Bunning, Juan Marichal, Jack Morris, Mike Mussina, Phil Niekro, Nolan Ryan, and Don Sutton. When gathering data for each of these pitchers, it feels fair to exclude Nolan Ryan’s stats as he is a top 5 pitcher all time and his stats are an anomaly compared to the others on this list. Collectively these 7 pitchers, excluding Ryan, averaged out for their careers 72.24 WAR, 3.38 ERA, 115 ERA+, and a 1.2 WHIP over an average of a 4,330 IP career. Up to this point Wheeler has thrown only 1379 innings so he’s not even a third of his way through what he would need to pitch to meet that threshold, at age 33 already. If we triple his career stats to match the average career length of the 7 mentioned hurlers, it’s easy to see that he’s a Hall of Fame talent with an unfortunately inconsistent field presence to start his career. With a career as long as the other pitchers he would have an 88.2 WAR, well above the average of the 7 Hall of Famers to go along with extremely similar whip, era, identical era+ and a higher strikeout rate. In no world does this mean Zack Wheeler should be a hall of famer, but it is interesting to compare his raw ability to that of historic pitchers who never won the Cy Young.

The past handful of Hall of Fame classes have been, in my opinion, mediocre. Some of the more recent inductees have all had great careers, no question, but it feels that the Hall has become a tad bit easier to get into with recent reforms. Could Wheeler sneak in after his playing days? It’s not out of the question if he stays healthy in the second half of his career.

By Karl Birkenstock

October 12, 2023