Jesús Luzardo bounces back to lead Phillies to series win over the Cubs: ‘It’s a sense of relief’

There was a moment in the second inning Wednesday when it seemed like things were about to spiral out of control for Jesús Luzardo.

The Phillies left-hander had given up a historically bad 20 earned runs across his previous two starts, which had both begun to unravel shortly after his first pitch of the game. After a scoreless first inning against the Chicago Cubs, though, Luzardo gave up a pair of singles to lead off the second.

Neither ball was hit particularly hard. But with two runners on and zero outs, it felt like Luzardo could be teetering on the edge of yet another disaster. Especially since Luzardo believed he had been tipping his pitches in his last two starts, possibly to runners behind him on second base.

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But this time, he fired back, striking out Nico Hoerner on three pitches and sitting down the next two batters swinging to strand both runners. He went on to record 10 strikeouts in the 7-2 Phillies win, looking much more like the pitcher he’d been in his first 11 starts, rather than the one who had cratered against the Brewers and Blue Jays.

“It’s a sense of relief, of understanding that the stuff’s still there,” Luzardo said.

The Cubs entered Wednesday tied with the Dodgers for the major league lead in runs scored with 376. But they didn’t appear to know what was coming from Luzardo, as the only hard hits they managed were a pair of doubles in the fourth inning that accounted for their only run off him.

“There’s a lot of things that we tinkered with,” Luzardo said. “I think that the biggest thing was attention to detail, attention to where we want to go, pitch selection that comes from me.”

Luzardo didn’t throw a single sinker, which he typically turns to 11.2% of the time. Was that part of the adjustment?

“Who knows?” Luzardo said with a grin. “We had a good game plan.”

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In addition to the secretive adjustments, Luzardo’s command was as sharp as it had been all season. Not only did he not allow a walk through six innings, he only had one three-ball count.

“He’s got great stuff, and everybody’s gonna have some bad outings, back-to-back bad outings,” said manager Rob Thomson. “But his stuff just outweighs everything.”

It also helped that the Phillies’ offense awakened to give him a comfortable lead. In the first two games of the series, the Phillies mustered just three total extra-base hits. They surpassed that by the end of the fourth inning on Wednesday against former Phillies draft pick Ben Brown, with doubles from Max Kepler and Trea Turner, a triple from Nick Castellanos that was just a few feet from leaving the ballpark, and a home run from Kyle Schwarber.

“Obviously going against a guy where we’re going to have to be a little bit picky where we want the ball,” Schwarber said. “He’s got a hard curveball, kind of a big running fastball that up-shoots. So [I] felt like we did a really good job of putting pressure on him early, and had some really big hits.”

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Alec Bohm joined the slugfest in the seventh inning with a solo shot to cap a four-RBI day. Apart from Johan Rojas, every member of the lineup recorded at least one hit.

“I just think the big hit has been kind of avoiding us a little bit, whether it’s been good defensive plays or just missing balls or anything like that,” Bohm said. “It was good today for some guys to get some big hits and two-out RBIs and keep the line moving.”

Max Lazar took over for Luzardo and allowed one run on two hits and a fielding error in the eighth. Michael Mercado, recalled on Wednesday morning from triple-A Lehigh Valley, pitched a scoreless ninth inning.

With the series win, the Phillies ended a skid of three consecutive series losses. They also secured the postseason tiebreaker over the Cubs, who are in first place in the National League Central.

But most important of all was Luzardo finally getting back to form.

“He’s very competitive, and he wants to do well all the time,” Thomson said. “He’s a really nice guy off the field. When he gets on that hill, he’s a bear, he really is. And I think it bothered him a lot. So I’m happy for him.”