It’s only April, but Jesús Luzardo finds himself staring down one of the biggest starts of his Phillies tenure so far.
Philadelphia entered 2026 with legitimate World Series aspirations but is now simply trying to stop its season from unraveling. The Phillies dropped to 8-14 -- 7 1/2 games behind the first-place Braves in the National League East -- with their sixth straight loss on Monday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
With the Phillies’ offense continuing to struggle and a tough matchup on tap against the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga tonight (7:40 p.m. ET), Luzardo’s performance could loom large as Philadelphia looks to snap its skid.
The problem? Luzardo owns a 7.94 ERA through four starts this season, including a nine-run outing against these very Cubs his last time out.
On the bright side, Luzardo has been missing bats, limiting walks and minimizing hard contact. His stuff looks good. And most of his percentile ranks are encouraging.
In fact, almost every stat except for his ERA says the left-hander is performing at a high level. Some of his underlying numbers even put him among the top starters in baseball. That includes K%-BB% and SIERA, two of the best metrics we have at our disposal for evaluating a pitcher’s performance and projecting future success.
Luzardo ranks sixth among qualifiers in K%-BB% (25.5%) and is third in SIERA (2.45), behind only the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler (2.04) and Imanaga (2.29). In fourth place is Phillies ace Cristopher Sánchez at 2.47.
So why is Luzardo’s actual ERA so high? The southpaw has been searching for answers, but poor luck and bad sequencing appear to be the primary culprits, rather than a significant fault he needs to correct.
After all, Luzardo has the highest batting average on balls in play (.417) and the lowest left-on-base percentage (41.7%) among qualifiers. Both of those stats tend to be very noisy and should regress toward Luzardo's career averages -- .307 and 70.0%, respectively -- over time.
Of course, patience isn’t really a luxury the Phillies can afford right now, and Luzardo’s strong underlying metrics won’t offer much comfort if the results don’t begin to improve soon. Philadelphia needs that to start tonight against the Cubs.