PHILADELPHIA — The last pitch Jesús Luzardo threw Friday was a 2-0 sinker, slipping down the middle.
The goal was to get back in the count. Instead, James McCann sent the pitch toward the right-field warning track, two runners soared around third to home, and manager Rob Thomson marched toward the mound. Six days removed from an 11-strikeout gem in Colorado, Luzardo did not make it out of the fifth inning in his third start of the season.
“I was falling behind too much all game,” Luzardo said. “I felt like I was 2-0 on every guy, which is just unacceptable, and eventually it caught up to me in the fifth.”
A 4-0 lead established minutes into the first inning became a 5-4 game when matters spiraled for Luzardo in the fifth. The no-hitter through four innings was quickly forgotten, turning into a five-hit, five-run outing for the lefty. And the Philadelphia Phillies, now 6-7, fell 5-4 to the Arizona Diamondbacks in their first game back at Citizens Bank Park since a season-opening homestand as Luzardo faltered and hitters struck out 16 times.
The problem, Luzardo felt, was in falling behind. He had trouble landing in the zone when it mattered, throwing 86 pitches but 51 for strikes. Last weekend in Colorado, that figure was 99 pitches, 72 for strikes.
The struggles had little to do with his arsenal or Arizona’s righty-heavy lineup, Luzardo said. He’s thrown his sinker, which was his least-used pitch against righties last season, more often this year. He threw 17 total Friday — the third most he’s thrown in a start the last four years and the highest percentage of sinkers he’s thrown in a start in that same span.
Right-handed batters recorded three hits off sinkers in the fifth inning. But it was not so much the pitch as the timing. The first sinker taken for a hit came on a 1-0 count. The second was a first-pitch bunt, which Alec Bohm did not properly field, that loaded the bases. That was not Luzardo’s fault.
“And we need to get an out right there, you know?” Thomson said. “We had a four-run lead. We need to come and get the ball, be aggressive and get an out at first base.”
The final sinker was that pitch to McCann. Luzardo’s goal was to throw a strike and get himself back in the count. It did not pan out.
“The problem today was just falling behind, just not throwing the off-speeds for strike, even the sinker, not throwing it for strike early,” Luzardo said.
Luzardo has a 6.23 ERA through three starts, which is really the product of Friday’s outing and a six-run (five via homer) outing March 29. What happened in Colorado — six-plus innings of one-run baseball — is exactly what Luzardo can be. Instead, there is still the question of what exactly went wrong in the starts that sandwiched a dominant day in Denver.
“The first (start) was a little louder contact,” Luzardo said. “Stuff was still good. Today was more so falling behind, a lot of self-inflicted stuff. So I think (the starts are) separate. Obviously frustrating, both of them. There’s a lot positive from all three of the starts so far, but just need to, at the end of the day, get in the zone more.”
And it did not help that an offense seemingly enjoying another cathartic outing went quiet yet again. Four runs scored just minutes into Friday’s game, then came a Diamondbacks mound visit. And Michael Soroka and Arizona’s righty-only bullpen stifled the Phillies from there — with the exception of Justin Crawford’s two-out triple in the ninth, bringing the crowd back to its feet and reigniting a semblance of optimism. Trea Turner flied out four pitches later, and that was that.
The Phillies have scored the fewest runs (46) and recorded the lowest OPS (.662) in a season’s first 13 games since 2016. And the refrain remains the same: There is no panic. These things will come.
“It’s early, man,” Brandon Marsh, who homered in the first, said.
It is April. But the lineup is chilly, and any slipups from starting pitchers are proving hard to overcome. So the Phillies descended the dugout stairs and headed for the clubhouse, no handshakes and high-fives, waiting for a chance to do it all over in 16 hours.