ANAHEIM, Calif. — There is duality to Zack Wheeler, a man with a gruff exterior who has become a frequent co-star in his wife’s TikToks. He is 36 years old, and, if anything, those around Wheeler know that he does not suffer fools. He will not waste his time on something that doesn’t merit it. It’s why, a few years ago, no one was certain how Wheeler would react to a presentation on his biomechanics.He was interested enough. The reports kept coming.“When I feel off, or stuff’s going wrong,” Wheeler said, “I really like looking at the biomechanics stuff because you can see a lot of different stuff, compared to the old-school video, that you might not see. They have the balls on your joints where you can see the smallest little difference.”So, in the four days between one of the worst starts of his career and a much-improved outing Sunday in a 5-2 Philadelphia Phillies win over the Los Angeles Angels, Wheeler leaned on a trusted tool. An analyst, who was not a Phillies employee at the beginning of August, showed Wheeler a graph.The ace was holding his glove 2 inches lower whenever he came set during his eight-run start against the Seattle Mariners. It had been trending downward all season. His posture was askew. It messed with his mechanics. He could not throw the baseball where he intended.“So what do we do?” Wheeler asked. “Just bring the front arm up a little bit. Go from there.”It sounds like a simple diagnosis; it is not. But Wheeler was better Sunday. He completed six innings for the first time in more than five weeks. He loaded the bases with nobody out in a shaky first inning but surrendered only one run. He posted five zeroes after that. He walked two batters with two outs in the sixth inning as his pitch count eclipsed 100, but he spun a sharp curveball to strike out José Siri.He looked more like Zack Wheeler. It was against one of the worst teams in baseball, but it was a refreshing six innings for a starter who has endured a trying stretch.“I’m still not out of it,” Wheeler said.This is true; Wheeler needed far too many pitches (108) to make it through six innings. He walked the first batter he faced, then plunked Mike Trout. A better team might have punished Wheeler more for those mistakes. Wheeler said he felt it all click on the first pitch of the fourth inning.Zack Wheeler, pictured in Seattle, had posted an 8.51 ERA over his past six starts. He changed his glove positioning for Sunday’s outing and had better results. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)There has been outsized attention on Wheeler over the last month because if the Phillies want to reach their ultimate goal, he is vital to the operation. The Phillies have won 13 of 15 games and hold a 4 1/2-game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks, whom they will play three times beginning Monday. But fixing Wheeler is high — maybe the highest item — on the list of things the club must do before the postseason.“Because you know what he can be and what he can do,” interim manager Don Mattingly said. “And this is a good start, right, to head in that direction. I’m sure he feels good about it, hopefully. But it’s good to get him going in that direction.”It was a process that somehow involved Japan.For the last few seasons, the Phillies had a full-time biomechanist, Anthony Brady, embedded with the big-league club. Brady traveled with the team and supplemented the work done by the pitching coaches and other analysts the club employs.But Brady departed the Phillies during the offseason to become an assistant general manager for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, a team in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league. That was his job until Aug. 4, when the Phillies rehired him. The Phillies had biomechanical data and people to analyze it while Brady was in Japan, but there was a certain familiarity between Wheeler and Brady.“He’s my guy,” Wheeler said.Brady played Division III baseball; he pitched for the University of Puget Sound, a liberal arts college in Washington. So with the Phillies in Seattle to begin this road trip, Brady reappeared.Maybe it’s a coincidence. The Phillies have coaches and analysts Wheeler trusts; everyone has spent considerable energy attempting to solve a monthlong swoon. But sometimes a different perspective helps.It’s one thing to have the data. But coaches and analysts want to be certain they have interpreted it and identified the proper tweak before bringing it to a pitcher, especially one of Wheeler’s stature. The last thing anyone wants is to chase the wrong issue and deepen the problems.Wheeler tried the different posture in his between-starts bullpen. It felt like it was supposed to feel. They went with the higher glove positioning into Sunday’s start.“You have to sync everything else up off of that,” Wheeler said. “But as long as I’m getting that front arm up, I’m not over-rotating, shooting towards the third-base on-deck circle. Obviously, you want to be shooting towards home. So just kind of getting that weight in the back leg and being more direct rather than rotational.”Wheeler, a little more than a year removed from the discovery of a dangerous blood clot that revealed thoracic outlet syndrome and put the remainder of his career in doubt, has softened that gruff exterior more often. He showed vulnerability during a six-start span that yielded an 8.51 ERA. He has had bad stretches before. But he’d emerge from them quicker. This is all part of returning from a major injury and being in the twilight of his career.“I expect a standard out of myself and I just haven’t been there,” Wheeler said. “So it makes it a little difficult. We just kind of beared down between starts and really tried to figure out what was going on. I feel like I kind of figured it out. And then the timing just clicked with it today in the fourth.”There is such a fine line. It’s a glove 2 inches higher, which makes the kinetic chain work like it’s supposed to work. It’s a hard-hit grounder that nicks Wheeler’s leg, but not enough to deter shortstop Trea Turner from turning a stabilizing double play that allows everyone to relax.“I knew that once he got that double play and got out of the inning with just one run,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said, “I felt pretty confident that he was going to be himself today.”And sometimes it helps to be a little curious about those biomechanical stick figures.