How do Zack Wheeler and Jesús Luzardo compare to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee? Better than you might think.

Let’s start with a little bit of trivia that should offer some context for the discussion referenced in the headline of this piece.

In their first 11 starts of the season, Zack Wheeler and Jesús Luzardo are both averaging six-plus innings per start with ERAs of 2.42 and 2.15, respectively.

Who were the last two Phillies teammates to open the same season with 66-plus innings and ERAs under 2.50 in their first 11 starts apiece?

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Wheeler and Aaron Nola have never done it.

Wheeler and Ranger Suárez fell just short last season. (Wheeler’s ERA was 2.53 through 11 starts.)

Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee? Nope. They never did it either.

The last tandem of Phillies starters to open a season doing what Luzardo and Wheeler have done in 2025 was none other than Cole Hamels and … Aaron Harang.

Wait … really?

If you’re like me, you forgot that Harang ever was a Phillie, let alone that he somehow managed to post a 2.02 ERA in his first 11 starts in red pinstripes in 2015. Or, maybe you didn’t forget and your brain just blocked it out as a trauma response. That was the season Ryne Sandberg resigned, Hamels was traded, and the Phillies finished 63-99 en route to drafting Mickey Moniak with the No. 1 overall pick. As for Harang, he never pitched in the majors again after that season, probably because he was 37 years old and had a 6.86 ERA over his last 18 starts. The rebuilding era was wild.

Long story short, it’s a long season. As good as Luzardo and Wheeler have been, they haven’t been good for nearly long enough to start invoking names like Halladay and Lee or the 2011 Phillies.

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And yet …

It’s kind of hard to have a conversation about Wheeler and Luzardo without mentioning Halladay and Lee. That’s how good Lizard Wheels has been through the first third of this season.

Consider:

Heading into Wheeler’s start against the Braves on Wednesday night, he and Luzardo rank first and second in wins above replacement among National League starters, as calculated by Baseball-Reference.com. It isn’t a stretch to think that Wheeler and Luzardo could become the first Phillies teammates to both finish in the top five in NL Cy Young voting since Halladay, Lee, and Hamels finished second, third, and fifth in 2011. (Clayton Kershaw won it.)

While WAR isn’t a great predictor of Cy Young finish, Luzardo and Wheeler are both in the conversation. Wheeler has the third-shortest odds in the NL behind the Pirates’ Paul Skenes and the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, according to ESPN Bet. Luzardo is sixth behind the Reds’ Hunter Greene and the Giants’ Logan Webb.

Look past the Cy Young and Lizard Wheels still has a chance to make history. Only three pitchers in Phillies history have ever finished a season with 180-plus innings pitched and an ERA+ of 170 or higher. Nola in 2018, Steve Carlton in 1972, and Grover Alexander in 1916.

Wheeler and Luzardo are both on pace to do it this season.

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Quick refresher on ERA+: It’s a measure of a pitcher’s ERA relative to league average, with league average being 100. Wheeler’s ERA+ is 170, which means he has been 70% better than league average. Luzardo’s is a whopping 191, which means he has been 91% better than league average.

If they maintain those numbers, they would finish the season as just the sixth set of teammates in MLB history to both log an ERA+ of at least 170 in 180-plus innings pitched.

Teammates with 180-plus innings and a 170+ ERA+ in a season:

Lower the threshold to a 160 ERA+ and you include tandems like Greg Maddux/Tom Glavine, Steve Carlton/Bob Gibson. Drop the innings requirement to 150, and you include Max Scherzer/Stephen Strasburg.

Those are some serious names.

The key phrase in all of this: on pace. A lot of pitchers are on pace to pitch a lot of innings right up until the moment they aren’t. Pretty much everything that can be said about Wheeler and Luzardo this season could have been said about Wheeler and Suarez last season. In fact, Suárez was even better than Luzardo through 11 starts last season: a 1.75 ERA in 72 innings with 77 strikeouts and 16 walks.

As Rob Thomson has said repeatedly, from the first day of spring training to last week: Gotta keep ‘em healthy.

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The real takeaway from any comparison to Halladay and Lee is that there will never be another Halladay and Lee. Both logged over 230 innings in 2011. It had been more than 40 years since a pair of teammates had both posted an ERA+ of 160 or better in that many innings. Nobody has done it since. The only other tandems to do it in the live-ball era: Carlton/Gibson (1969), Jerry Koosman/Tom Seaver (1969), Sam McDowell/Luis Tiant (1968). Other than that, you have to go back to a time when people still named their kids Grover, Hippo, and Mordecai.

Doc and Cliff were throwbacks from that original era. But Zack and Jesús have a chance to make an argument as the next best thing.