PHILADELPHIA
While the focus from the Miami Marlins’ 3-2 walk-off loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday was on the overturned play at the plate in the sixth inning that allowed the Phillies to score a run and Brian Anderson’s slip in the outfield to set up Philadelphia’s game-winner, another quality performance from starting pitcher Jesus Luzardo was pushed into the periphery.
Luzardo, the 24-year-old left-handed pitcher raised in South Florida and a Parkland Stoneman Douglas High alumnus, held the Phillies to two earned runs while striking out nine over a career-high-tying seven innings while getting a no-decision.
In seven starts overall since coming off the injured list following being sidelined for nearly two-and-a-half months with a left forearm strain, Luzardo has a 2.91 ERA (14 earned runs over 43 1/3 innings with 41 strikeouts against 11 walks). Opponents are hitting .188 against him.
It’s the type of results Luzardo has been hoping to achieve since being acquired by the Marlins last season in the Starling Marte trade with the Oakland Athletics. He struggled after the trade, pitching to a 6.44 ERA in 12 starts only making it through six innings once in that span as he battled himself mentally and physically.
Now that he has found his rhythm, he wants to continue it over the final month of the season and into the offseason.
“It would be huge,” Luzardo said. “I’ve kind of focused on bouncing back from last year to this year. Obviously the injury was a bump in the road, but since coming back I’ve just been trying to stay focused on staying to my routine and just take them out every five days and be competitive.”
So what has been different? Here’s a look at a few aspects that have helped Luzardo.
Pitching deep into games
Pitched at least six innings in five of past seven starts; made it five in the other two. This includes tying his career high of seven innings three separate times — Aug. 7 at the Chicago Cubs, Aug. 24 at the Oakland Athletics and Tuesday at the Phillies.
Luzardo is on a run of four consecutive starts pitching at least six innings while allowing no more than three earned runs. Prior to this, Luzardo had never strung together more than two such games together in his MLB career.
The way he’s doing this can be his ability to keep his pitch count low inning by inning. Overall, Luzardo is averaging just 15.11 pitches per inning since his return, the lowest of any Marlins starter since the All-Star Break (ace Sandy Alcantara, for comparison, is at 15.36).
Of Luzardo’s 43 full innings pitched in this stretch, he threw 10 pitches or fewer in 10 of those innings and needed 20 or more pitches just seven times.
Swings and misses
Luzardo ranks in the 89th percentile in baseball this year with a 32.2 percent swing and miss rate.
While his breaking ball — which Statcast identifies as a curveball but Luzardo refers to as a slider — gets most of the attention because it’s his most-thrown pitch (31.6 percent of the time) and has resulted in half of his strikeouts (41 of 81), don’t overlook his changeup as a quality pitch that misses its share of bats.
Opponents have swung at Luzardo’s changeup 162 times this season. They have missed on 76 of those swings for a 46.9 percent whiff rate. That’s the fourth-best mark in baseball among pitchers who have thrown at least 150 changeups that opponents have swung at, trailing only the Milwaukee Brewers’ Brandon Woodruff (51.4 percent), the Toronto Blue Jays’ Trevor Richards (49 percent) and the Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal (47.5 percent).
Minimizing damage on the fastballs
Opponents feasted on Luzardo’s fastballs last season, hitting .348 against his four-seam fastball and .337 against his sinker. Twelve of his 20 home runs allowed came on those two pitches.
This year? Opponents are hitting just .264 against the four-seam, which he is throwing the least of all of his pitches (21.1 percent of the time) and .209 against the sinker.
Making both of his fastballs be effective pitches is key to set up the changeup and breaking ball as put away pitches and it has worked this season.
This story was originally published September 07, 2022 3:41 PM.
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