KANSAS CITY -- Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly spoke this week about how the Phils’ rotation is, “obviously a great rotation.”
Even with its issues in the back end, it has been one of baseball’s best. Cristopher Sánchez learned before Saturday night’s 6-1 victory over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium that he had made his second NL All-Star team. He could start the game on July 14 at Citizens Bank Park. A strong argument can be made that Zack Wheeler deserved a spot. Jesús Luzardo didn’t have the ERA to warrant serious consideration from his peers, but advanced metrics like FanGraphs WAR suggest he has been one of the league’s better pitchers in the first half.
Luzardo showed his All-Star potential on Saturday.
He allowed four hits, one run and struck out nine in six innings, the ninth time in his last 13 starts he has pitched six or more innings. He improved to 7-4 with a 3.75 ERA overall. He is 4-1 with a 2.26 ERA in his last 10 starts.
“Zeus, setting the tone in that game early, just on the attack,” Mattingly said. “For this kind of series you want a guy to come out and attack.”
Luzardo got 19 swings and misses, including a career-high 15 with his sweeper. He struck out six with the pitch.
“That’s an elite pitch,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “You hope that he makes a mistake.”
“It’s the angle with him,” Mattingly said. “It kind of gets into that Sanchy range, where you get pitches feeding off each other. The fastball sinks, and then the changeup, and then the sweeper, and it all starts feeding out of the window. It’s really effective.”
Luzardo’s whiff rate on the sweeper is 55 percent since the beginning of June. It’s almost 10 points higher than his career average with the pitch.
“Earlier in the year, I almost felt like I threw it so much that I forgot how to throw it,” Luzardo said. “But lately, I feel like the last five or six starts, it felt back to what it was, and to see it maybe even get better.”
Luzardo allowed his only run in the fourth inning. Lane Thomas hit a one-out double, advanced to third on a fielder’s choice and scored on an infield single.
The Phillies took a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning when J.T. Realmuto hit a two-run home run to left-center field against Royals right-hander and All-Star Michael Wacha. It was Realmuto’s sixth homer of the season. Rookie Gabriel Rincones Jr. followed with a home run into the Royals' bullpen in right field to make it 3-0. It was Rincones’ second career homer.
Alec Bohm’s 11th homer of the season came in the sixth inning to make it 4-1.
Trea Turner scored on a wild pitch in the seventh. Rincones’ two-out double in the eighth scored an insurance run.
So, on a night when five Phillies made the All-Star team, the non-All-Stars made the greatest contributions.
“If we're going to be any good, we need contributions up and down,” Mattingly said. “It can't always be Harp and Schwarbs hitting homers and driving in a bunch of runs. It's got to be the whole roster, obviously.”