9:15am: The Phillies have formally announced the extension, which indeed goes into effect next season and covers the 2025-27 campaigns.
8:22am: It’s a three-year, $126MM contract for Wheeler, reports Matt Gelb of The Athletic. That’s the largest annual value ever on any contract extension in the sport’s history and the fourth-largest AAV on any contract ever, placing Wheeler only behind Shohei Ohtani, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
8:08am: The Phillies have agreed to a multi-year contract extension with right-hander Zack Wheeler, ESPN’s Buster Olney reports. The Wasserman client had been entering the final season of his current five-year, $118MM contract. Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has called an extension for Wheeler a priority at multiple points throughout the offseason, however, and it seems the two sides have found common ground on a deal that’ll keep Wheeler from reaching the market. A formal announcement of the extension is “imminent,” Olney adds.
There are no options or opt-out opportunities in the contract, per Todd Zolecki of MLB.com. It’s a straight three-year deal that’ll begin in the 2025 season and run through 2027. That’s notable for luxury tax purposes, as it means Wheeler’s CBT hit will remain $23.6MM for the upcoming season before vaulting substantially in 2025. The Phillies were already into the second tier of luxury penalization, and a significant boost for Wheeler would’ve pushed them into the third tier, dropping their top pick in the draft by 10 spots.
Wheeler already has more than ten years of major league service time, and he’ll hit five years with the Phillies at the end of the 2024 season. That’ll give him 10-and-5 rights, granting Wheeler the power to veto any potential trade over the life of his new contract with the Phils.
It’s rare for any nine-figure deal in free agency to wind up being considered a bargain, but Wheeler has been worth every penny of his original Phillies contract — and then some. Currently 33 years old, Wheeler ranks fourth in Major League Baseball with 629 1/3 innings pitched dating back to 2020, the first season of the contract. His 3.06 ERA, 2.90 FIP and 3.42 SIERA rank 11th, fourth and 15th among 121 qualified big league pitchers in that time.
Since signing with the Phils, Wheeler has punched out 26.7% of his opponents against a sparkling 5.3% walk rate. Despite the homer-friendly nature of Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, Wheeler has yielded an average of just 0.74 homers per nine frames — closely in line with his career mark of 0.83.
Wheeler’s 96 mph average fastball velocity in 2023 was down from its 97.3 mph peak (set in 2021), but he actually posted excellent swinging-strike and opponents’ chase rates, sitting at 13.% and 36.6%, respectively. Those two marks were not only his best as a Phillie but the best single-season marks he’s posted in either category in his entire career to date. When opponents did manage to make contact against Wheeler, it was typically of the feeble variety. Hitters averaged a dismal 86.9 mph exit velocity against Wheeler this past season, placing the right-hander in the 88th percentile of big league pitchers.
More to come.
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