The Phillies announced Saturday that pitcher Zack Wheeler will be out for the rest of the season.
A statement from the team said: Wheeler was diagnosed with venous thoracic outlet syndrome, and the recommendation is to undergo thoracic outlet decompression surgery in the coming weeks. Details of the surgery are forthcoming. The timeline of recovery from the surgery is generally 6-8 months.
Wheeler had been dealing with something unknown in the shoulder since around the All-Star break and it caused him to be moved back a few days on a start. A dip in velocity and command heightened questions about what may be wrong, but it was after a start in Washington on August 15, in which Wheeler pitched five innings, gave up two runs and struck out six, where concerns grew. Though Wheeler said he felt really good during his outing, after the game he described “heaviness” in the shoulder area. That’s when red flags went up.
“Yeah, so that’s it (heaviness),” said Phillies head athletic trainer Paul Buchheit. “They weren’t very subtle but having some heaviness and fullness was one of the symptoms where we said, ‘hey let’s get this looked at’.
“He had a venous thoracic outlet syndrome, so it’s not the same as, say, a neurological vascular outlet, so the recovery can be a little bit different. The fact that he wasn’t dealing with this, it was more of an acute issue, that also is in his favor that he wasn’t dealing with this for a long time prior to going under for the procedure. He wasn’t exhibiting any of the symptoms that ultimately drove us to get the Washington Nationals docs involved in evaluating it, which they were great, by the way in expediting everything. We do think they were independent. Typically, these things kind of have a cluster of symptom patterns. He wasn’t exhibiting any of those until we had him evaluated.”
Wheeler underwent a thrombolysis procedure to remove the blood clot on August 18.
“He’s doing well,” said Buchheit. “He’s doing fine. (There were) two second opinions and they were the leaders in the industry on this topic.”
The human aspect of something like this always comes first, and from management to players that is first and foremost on everyone’s mind. After that, however, there is the business of baseball and the absence of Wheeler is a huge blow to this baseball team.
“He’ll miss this season, but then we figure he’ll come back in the six-to-eight-month time period and come back and be the Zack Wheeler of old,” said president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. “That’s what we were told. Unless something unanticipated happens, he’ll be able to come back and pitch like he has before this.”
Dombrowski said he hasn’t spoken to Wheeler but has shared texts. He also said Wheeler was at the ballpark Friday.
How the rest of the season will play out with the starting staff is now a little more mysterious. Manager Rob Thomson was on the cusp of implementing a six-man rotation just before Wheeler went out. Now, it’s all in a bit of flux.
“I found out a little bit more last night and he’s healthy,” said an obviously relieved Thomson. “It’s disappointing to lose him but we have a lot of depth on our club. So, the six-to-eight-month recovery was encouraging to me. I talked to him yesterday; he was in here yesterday.
“Our offense has kicked in. The three lefties threw very well. I was proud of (Taijuan Walker) getting us through five innings last night. We’ll see what (Aaron Nola) has today, I’m expecting more out of him today. I think they’ve responded very well (to not having Wheeler).”
While the tail-end of the recovery period takes Wheeler to about the beginning of next season, it really is all speculation at this point. So many factors will come into play over that time but for the time being, positivity seems to be prominent.
“If you have symptoms from a neurological perspective, they may be present for a long time and it takes a while to evaluate, treat through,” said Buchheit. “A lot of times you don’t go to surgical options right away. With Zack it was an acute onset. He doesn’t have that long, protracted time period where he’s been battling things. The surgeons say that he’s going to have a really good prognosis with this.
“The protocols on this are pretty general. A guy can start throwing, maybe eight weeks after the procedure. But that all really depends on how he’s presenting, how the procedure goes and how he’s doing in the rehab process.”
In the meantime, we will see how it all plays out without their ace’s presence. Does Andrew Painter get the long-awaited call-up? Is there someone else in the wings? Is there another game-plan? That is the challenge facing upper management.
“It’s disappointing but I think everyone knows it’s out of our control,” said Thomson. “We’re happy that he’s going to be healthy cause it’s a very serious thing that he went through. They’re baseball players and they kind of move on. We’ve got a game today and they’re not going to cancel it and we’ve got another game tomorrow.
“We just got to keep moving forward.”
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