From Zack Wheeler to Andrew Painter, Phillies starters are having an incredible spring training

CLEARWATER, Fla. — One guy showed up to spring training missing a rib.

Another guy, who’d just signed a massive contract extension, had the worst season of his career in 2025.

A third guy, who was the club’s top prospect since Cole Hamels, seemed to walk every batter in triple A in his first full season after elbow surgery.

When pitchers and catchers reported to Phillies camp on Feb. 11, the pool of six starting pitchers did so under storm clouds of worry and doubt. Five weeks later, each of them has done everything possible to relax that worry and allay those doubts.

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Ribless ace Zack Wheeler is ahead of schedule, workhorse Aaron Nola is making 2025 look like an aberration, and 22-year-old Andrew Painter again looks like a generational talent.

Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, and Taijuan Walker, the other half of the half-dozen, have been just as good or better.

Including the stats from the World Baseball Classic, with three spring games to play, the five Phillies starters have combined for a 1.41 ERA, have a 5.50 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and have allowed just three home runs in 63⅔ innings.

The Phillies are pleased and relieved.

“Yeah,” said manager Rob Thomson, “I’m really happy with where we’re at.”

He should be.

Wheeler is six months removed from rib removal to address thoracic outlet syndrome, which typically requires a nine-month recovery window. However, on Wednesday he pitched two simulated innings against major league hitters. He threw five different pitches and emerged with no complications. He will pitch two innings of a minor league game Monday, and, while he won’t be ready for the start of the season, he might be back within a month — or, to put it another way, he might be back two months early.

Nola fought injury and ineptitude last season, the first of his 10 big league seasons in which he recorded a negative wins above replacement metric (-0.3). This spring he rebounded to lead Team Italy’s staff to the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic, giving up just one run in two starts, and he was back to carrying a heavy load: His nine innings pitched led all WBC pitchers.

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Painter was on track to join the major league team in 2023 when he blew out his elbow in spring training, which cost him the bulk of the next two years. He was so inconsistent last season, with a 5-6 record and a 5.40 ERA in triple A, the Phillies didn’t consider promoting him late in the year even though they went to the playoffs without Wheeler and left-handed reliever José Alvarado. This spring, though, Painter has walked just two batters in his four starts and has eight strikeouts in 11⅔ innings.

Sánchez, who finished second in the NL Cy Young Award voting last year and will start Thursday against the Rangers on opening day, never questioned whether that trio would rebound.

“I always trusted what we have here,” Sánchez said Friday. “I never had a doubt that we were going to be good this year. I think we’re going to be one of the best rotations in baseball.”

Sánchez will lead it. He had a rough WBC debut for the Dominican Republic against Nicaragua. However he rebounded with a strong second start and wound up leading the WBC with 12 strikeouts, and, after Friday’s five-inning dominance of the visiting Tigers, he’s got 20 total whiffs this spring.

Walker, who swung between starting and relieving roles last year, has allowed one earned run in his two spring starts.

And Luzardo, who just signed a five-year, $135 million extension, leads the Phillies in spring training strikeouts with 13 in his three starts.

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Granted, some of these numbers were compiled against rosters lacking some of their best players. WBC lineups were loaded with the game’s most prolific hitters. For instance, maybe Painter doesn’t pitch two scoreless innings March 1 if reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge is in the Yankees’ lineup instead of in Team USA’s.

Then again, on the other end of the competition spectrum, Nola gave up just one run in four innings in the WBC semifinal against a star-studded Venezuelan lineup that won the gold medal the next night.

It’s not just the first six starters who make Thomson optimistic. Bryse Wilson, a 28-year-old swingman for the White Sox last season, shut out three of his four opponents this spring. Tucker Davidson, who spent 2025 with the Lotte Giants in Korea and who turns 30 on Wednesday, has pitched better than his stats in two starts. Both signed minor league deals.

If the Phillies have to break glass in case of emergency, they’re the pitchers waiting behind the glass. Last year, beyond Walker, the Phillies didn’t have reliable options.

“That was one of the things that we talked about early in camp — just the depth of that rotation,” Thomson said. “Not just the [first] five guys, but guys that can come up and fill in if we have an injury or we need a spot start, a doubleheader, or whatever. I feel pretty confident right now.”

Truth be told, he feels a lot more confident than he could have imagined he’d be feeling when the lads showed up back on Feb. 11.