Categories: Phillies Beat with Destiny Lugardo

Jesús Luzardo trade helps Phillies address concerns about starting pitching depth

Dave Dombrowski is the president of baseball operations for the Phillies. (Cheryl Pursell)

The Phillies will head into 2025 with a rotation that’s five deep after trading for former Marlins left-handed starter Jesús Luzardo.

One of the great clichés in baseball is you can’t have too much starting pitching. Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suárez and Spencer Turnbull combined for a 3.14 ERA over 767 innings in 2024. They were 81-49 when those five pitchers started a game. The five other non-openers used in the rotation combined for a 7.53 over 132 2/3 innings. They were 14-15 in those games.

The Phillies had quality, but not enough quantity.

The solution? Add more quality. Luzardo is probably not going to have an ERA around eight, but the Phillies probably sign up for a guaranteed 132 innings out of him in 2025.

It’s far from a guarantee. In his career-best year in 2023, Luzardo pitched to a 3.58 over 178 2/3 innings. He started Game 1 of the 2023 NL Wild Card series against the Phillies and looked like one of the best young pitchers in the game.

An elbow and back injury limited him to just 12 starts in 2024. The big injury, a lumbar stress reaction, ended his season in June.

The injuries greatly diminished his trade value. Miami was able to land a Top 100 prospect in infielder Starlyn Caba in the trade, but if Luzardo stayed healthy, we’re talking about a Garrett Crochet-esque package for Luzardo with two Top 100 prospects and more.

The Phillies’ willingness to make the trade and include one of their five-best prospects in the deal proves that they feel comfortable with Luzardo’s medicals. Luzardo recently told Miami reporters at a Marlins charity event that he expects to be “100% full-go” for Opening Day.

The Phillies were one of just five teams in MLB to have four starters pitch at least 150 innings. That tells you that most of the league relies a lot more on their starting depth. The World Series champion Dodgers, for example, did not have a single starter eclipse 150 innings during the regular season.

Multiple starting pitching injuries is the one thing that could turn the club from a 95 to an 85-win team. The Phillies have been pretty fortunate when it comes to health over the last few years. Wheeler has not been on the IL since 2022. Nola’s last time on the non-COVID IL was 2017. Sanchez has stayed healthy over the last two years. The only real question mark has been Suarez, who has spent time on the injured list in each of the last three seasons.

The Phillies are bound to encounter a season where that level of injury luck just isn’t there. Even though Luzardo has some injury risk, it’s nice for the Phillies to know they have options in case their biggest strength is compromised.

Even if the injured list begins looking a bit crowded, they’ll get a big boost when top prospect Andrew Painter is ready to begin his season with the Phillies come June or July. Maybe the Phillies find themselves running a six-man rotation during the dog days of summer to give everyone a breather as they gear up for the postseason.

But all of this does not mean the Phillies won’t have to dig even further into their depth at times this season. Other starters currently on the 40-man roster include Seth Johnson, Alan Rangel, Kyle Tyler and Tyler Phillips. Phillips is out of minor league options, so he’ll either make the team out of camp as a swingman or get waived.

Mick Abel, Moisés Chace and Jean Cabrera, who were all protected from the Rule 5 Draft this year, will likely spend most of the year developing in the minors. Chace, however, could contribute out of the bullpen later in the year if he gets off to a strong start and the Phillies have a need.

And then there’s Taijuan Walker. The Phillies have him on a throwing program that they hope will be more effective than the one they had to stop and start during the regular season. With Luzardo in the mix, Walker is probably no longer competing for a No. 5 starter spot, though an injury or two in February or March could change things.

If Walker gets to camp and it’s clear the throwing program did not work the way the team intended it to, he will likely be on another team year. If the program does work and Walker’s velocity and effectiveness improve, the Phillies could either keep him in the bullpen as a long reliever or trade him to a team that’s willing to give him another chance to start. Maybe the Phillies get a tiny bit of salary relief or an interesting prospect in return.

Either way, the Phillies won’t count on Walker in 2025 and the Luzardo trade further erodes any path Walker had to winning a rotation spot with the Phillies.

One of the biggest weak areas the Phillies have been unable to address has been the upper minors starting depth. For the Phillies, it’s not a problem that’s solved by throwing money at more free agents since you can only guarantee five starting spots. They have mostly sidestepped this issue by having really good starters that tend to stay healthy.

Trading for Luzardo now gives them at least another year to shore up their depth. It may seem insignificant now with the star power they have at the top of the rotation, but creating a reliable pitching pipeline will go a long way to helping an already great organization like the Phillies become even better.

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Destiny Lugardo

A lifelong native of Philadelphia, Destiny has been a contributor for Phillies Nation since January 2019 and was named Deputy Editorial Director in May 2020.