WASHINGTON (AP) — Jesús Luzardo got a handshake from Bryce Harper in the clubhouse and fist bumps or back slaps from other teammates on Saturday after striking out 11 batters in — and his first regular-season appearance in 9 1/2 months.
About a week ago he watched his previous start, a loss for his former team, the Miami Marlins, against, coincidentally, the Washington Nationals, Saturday’s opponent.
“It just wasn’t me. At all,” the left-hander said about that June 16 outing after allowing two runs in five innings to earn the win for Philadelphia in an 11-6 victory at Nationals Park this time. “So I’m glad to get back to feeling like myself.”
Less than a week after that June game, Luzardo went on the injured list with a back problem that was expected to sideline him for up to six weeks. Instead, he missed the rest of the 2024 season and never returned to the Marlins.
He was traded to the Phillies for minor leaguers in December. And his new club was certainly pleased to see him on the mound Saturday.
“He’s awesome. Fits right in. He’s electric,” said Bryson Stott, who joined Kyle Schwarber and Brandon Marsh in homering for the visitors. “Obviously we saw him a lot (with Miami). It’s even more electric when he’s striking out 11 of a different team and not us.”
The only time a pitcher recorded more strikeouts in his first game with Philadelphia came in 1997, when Garrett Stephenson had 12 against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Luzardo gave up five hits and two runs — both on Keibert Ruiz’s second-inning homer.
“The only bad pitch he made, probably,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said.
One key for Luzardo was his sweeper, which he threw more than 20 times and combined with his slider to generate most of his strikeouts.
That was more than he expected to go to the sweeper.
“It kind of fits in the game plan, but we go based off how it’s feeling,” said Luzardo, who was born in Peru, went to high school in Florida and originally was drafted by the Nationals in 2016. “Today, it felt really good, so we leaned on it a little bit more.”
That, along with a fastball that consistently was around 97 mph, kept the Nationals batters off-kilter.
The sweeper, Luzardo explained, is “just another way of getting guys out. Different swing types. Different profiles for a hitter. It just fits in the game plan a little bit in different ways than I would use my normal slider. Just finding different avenues of getting guys out.”
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