Fans should appreciate Bryce Harper and Zack Wheeler, 2nd best tandem in Phillies history | Opinion
PHILADELPHIA — By this time next week, the Phillies will have played a ballgame or two. They’ll probably have won at least one, considering that Zack Wheeler will start their opener. In his five season debuts since joining the Phillies in 2020, Wheeler allowed zero runs twice and one run twice. He struck out 29 batters and walked four; twice, he walked zero.
Wheeler’s early-season efficiency stands as one of the many markers of the value the team’s two brightest stars deliver. For instance, Bryce Harper’s OPS in March/April is .983, the best of any of his six monthly splits … except for October, when the playoffs happen, and he’s even more productive.
When it’s money time, there’s nobody in baseball better than Bryce. Or Wheels.
They start fast. They finish hard. They make more than $69 million combined — Wheeler is the highest-paid pitcher this season, while Harper’s seven-year-old, $330 million deal remains No. 9 all-time — and they earn every dime of it. Maybe more.
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They are the Phillies’ best tandem of stars since Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton. They’re regular-season studs — Harper has an NL MVP with the Phillies and three top-12 finishes, while Wheeler finished second twice for the Cy Young Award and top 12 four times in five Phillies seasons — and they’re even better when the lights shine brightest.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson was a Yankees coach from 2008 to 2017, with a World Series win in 2009, but even those six playoff teams didn’t have a run of sustained excellence by a starter/player tandem to match Harper and Wheeler.
“It’s been pretty special, really,” Thomson agreed.
They give the Phillies an incredible foundation for hope. Yet, the fan base seems indifferent on the eve of the 2025 campaign. Pessimistic, even.
Wheeler knows. Wheeler shrugs.
“I could care less,” he said, drawling a bit, with north Georgia laconism. “You know, I think it’s maybe better if you don’t have that spotlight on you. Going back to 2022, when we made it to the World Series, we kind of just flew under the radar a little bit, and nobody talked about us all that much, and it was fine with us. You know, we just kept playing ball.”
That paid unintended dividends, he said. Perhaps it will again: “Maybe certain guys won’t feel certain pressures. Maybe they play a little bit better that way.”
When you’re making over $40 million in a season, like Wheeler is, and when you’re the face of a big-market organization, like Harper is, the pressure never leaves. Both seem to thrive from it. In a town where the likes of Joel Embiid and Claude Giroux have faded in the spotlight, this trait should be celebrated.
It is rare. Ask Jalen Hurts.
The current entitlement of Phillies fans is astonishing, given the history of a team with the most losses in the history not only of baseball, or American sports, but in the history of the world, a notorious tradition they only recently have broken.
My first full baseball season in Philadelphia was 1996, right after the strike-shortened 1995 season. Benito Santiago hit a career-high 30 home runs. Jim Eisenreich was hitting .361 on Sept. 1 when he broke his foot and aborted a trade to the Dodgers. Curt Schilling wasted the first of 4 1/2 dominant seasons for a team that finished last in the NL East three times and third twice. It was awful.
My first season covering the team was 2002. Bobby Abreu was the best player for the first few seasons, but the team remained a .500 proposition. Then Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels matured into a force that won five straight division titles and the 2008 World Series. Those were heady times, amplified by the nightly parties at brand-new Citizens Bank Park.
What the Phillies were 30 years ago was an embarrassment.
What they became about 20 years ago was an improvement.
What they are now should be treasured.
As the Phillies begin their sixth season of the Harper/Wheeler era, there’s a lot of whining about how disappointing the last three teams have been. They lost the World Series in six games, then lost the National League Championship Series in seven, then lost the National League Division Series in four. Don’t blame Harper or Wheeler.
