For all the hand-wringing (much of it deserved) over the moves the decisions the Phillies made, the players acquired and the Trade Deadline moves not made, the core strength of the team have never been in doubt.
Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper are star sluggers.
Jhoan Duran is an elite closer.
And the top three pitchers in the starting rotation match up against anyone else’s in baseball.
On Tuesday night, the Phillies notched yet another team shutout under their belts, a 5-0 suffocation of the Washington
Nationals at Citizens Bank Park. They’re making this a bit of a habit.
The Phils are off to a hot start in August, winning their first four games by a combined score of 24-3. That includes back-to-back shutouts of the Orioles in Baltimore over the weekend (5-0 and 8-0) as well as 6-3 win on Monday night.
That’s three shutouts in their last four games, the last one nearly a complete game effort by Jesus Luzardo, who continues to establish himself as an annual Cy Young contender.
There can be no doubt, at this point, Dave Dombrowski’s acquisition of Luzardo from the Miami Marlins two off-seasons ago will go down as one of the best in franchise history. The two prospects the Phillies traded to get him, Starlyn Caba and Emaarion Boyd, are still nowhere close to being Major League ready, if they ever will.
The 20-year-old Caba entered the 2025 season as a consensus top-100 prospect in baseball, but has not appeared on any lists in ‘26. In 68 games at High-A the middle infielder has a .745 OPS, bolstered by an outstanding walk rate but little else. He’s young, and there’s time for development, but this is not a star player in the making.
Boyd is a 22-year-old outfielder playing in AA. In 58 games his OPS is just .655, with only 10 extra-base hits in 193 plate appearances.
Luzardo, meanwhile, has become a bona fide ace.
He continues to flourish in his second season in Philadelphia and has been especially hot over his last 10 starts, posting a 1.98 ERA, 33.1% K-rate, 8.7% BB-rate, 0.97 WHIP and .175 batting average allowed. During that stretch, no pitcher in baseball has accumulated more fWAR (2.2) than Luzardo. He’s thrown the second-most innings over that timeframe, the most strikeouts (84), and has the sixth-lowest batting average allowed. He given up one or zero runs in seven of his last eight outings, and if you throw out his six-run start against the Marlins last week, his ERA would be 1.01 since June 23.
But let’s go back even further. He got off to a brutal start this season, with a 7.94 ERA after his first four appearances. Since then (19 starts), his 3.2 fWAR trails only Jacob Misiorowski (4.5), Chris Sale (3.7), and teammate Cristopher Sanchez (3.4).
Luzardo’s home/road splits still show him with a higher ERA at Citizens Bank Park (4.85) than on the road (2.01), but most of that was due to the damage inflicted on his first three home starts in which he gave up a combined 19 runs. After a five-run outing against the White Sox on June 5, Luzardo has now gone four straight starts at home allowing either one or no runs.
His mastery of lefties continues to be a strength, allowing a slash line of .156/.207/.193 this year. He’s given up just one home run to a left-handed hitter as opposed to 10 against righties, thanks mostly to a career-high ground ball rate of 50.4%. He has not had a season higher than 42.8%, which was last season. He’s coupled that with a 20.9% hard-hit rate that is his lowest since 2022.
Luzardo is incorporating his new-found sweeper more than ever. Introduced last season, it has become a game-changing weapon. He threw it nearly one-third of the time in ’25, 32.1%, with his 96.5 mph fastball used just as often (33.3%). This year, the sweeper has become his most-used pitch by far, tossing it 37.8% of the time compared to his four-seamer, 24.6%. Luzardo has essentially ditched his slider and become a four-pitch pitcher, utilizing a changeup 18.9% of the time (17.3% last year) and a sinker, 18.8% (10.8% in ‘25).
When Dombrowski made the deal to acquire Luzardo from Miami, there were question marks. He had been injured in 2024 and no one was sure if he could ever be a consistent, top-of-the-rotation starter on a consistent basis. He also was only under team control for two seasons (2025 and ‘26). The five-year, $135 million extension he signed back in March keeps him in Philadelphia for the entirety of his prime at an average of $27 million a season.
That’s a steal for a pitcher who is likely to finish in the top-five of Cy Young voting for a second straight season.
The Phillies have a number of weaknesses and concerns as they try to snag one of the NL’s three wild card spots. It’s been an up-and-down season virtually across the board.
But one thing they can count on is a playoff rotation led by three aces: Sanchez, Zack Wheeler and Jesus Luzardo.
