Phillies pick up potentially huge rotation addition in trade for Luzardo

Outfield, bullpen and back of the starting rotation were the three clearest areas the Phillies needed to address when the offseason began and after signing Jordan Romano and Max Kepler to one-year contracts, they acquired left-handed starting pitcher Jesús Luzardo on Sunday morning from the Marlins.

The Phillies are sending the Marlins their No. 4 prospect, Dominican shortstop Starlyn Caba, and outfielder Emaarion Boyd, a former 11th-round pick who spent 2024 at High-A.

This has the potential to be the highest impact addition of the three for the Phillies. They needed a fifth starter but Luzardo is much more than that, closer to a No. 2 when healthy, and he said last week that he is after missing the final 3½ months of the season with a back injury.

Luzardo, 27, comes with two more years of club control and is eligible for free agency after the 2026 season. He immediately upgrades the Phillies’ rotation and takes it from one of the best in baseball to probably the best in baseball. He offers the Phillies protection if Ranger Suarez departs in free agency after 2025. Suarez hired Scott Boras last week and has surely seen the prices of pitching in free agency, so that’s a real possibility. And Luzardo also maintains for the Phillies a strong rotation should an attractive trade offer for Suarez materialize over the next two months.

Luzardo’s best year was 2023, his only full season of health, when he went 10-10 with a 3.58 ERA, striking out 208 batters in 178⅔ innings. He had Tommy John surgery in 2016, missed a little less than half the season in 2022 with a forearm issue, two weeks in 2024 with elbow tightness and did not pitch after June 16 because of a lumbar stress reaction.

Luzardo did tell reporters just last week, though, that he is healthy and throwing.

“Been able to go through my normal offseason progression: throwing, running, starting to get off the mound,” Luzardo told MLB.com. “Feeling really good [with my] elbow, back, whole body, and just really gearing up for spring training and eyeing down that Opening Day to be 100% full-go, which for now, everything feels really good, and we are full-go.”

Luzardo looked like he was growing into a top-of-the-rotation starter as recently as 2023. In 50 starts from 2022-23, he pitched to a 3.48 ERA and 1.15 WHIP with 328 strikeouts in 279 innings.

The Phillies’ lineup knows all too well. They knocked him out after four innings in the 2023 wild-card round but have othwerwise had trouble with Luzardo’s 95-97 mph fastball, plus changeup and mid-80s slider. This is what he’s done the last five times he’s faced them in the regular season:

• 5⅓ IP, 1 R, 11 K
• 7 IP, 2 R, 9 K
• 6 IP, 3 R, 5 K
• 6⅓ IP, 2 R, 9 K
• 5⅔ IP, 2 R, 8 K

A 2.97 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 30⅓ innings.

Aside from 2023, Luzardo has topped out at 100⅓ innings in the majors. He certainly doesn’t have the track record of durability of a Zack Wheeler or Aaron Nola, but maybe that’s the point. There isn’t as much workhorse wear-and-tear on the left arm of Luzardo despite his starting in the majors since 2020.

Luzardo projects to earn $6 million through arbitration this offseason, according to MLB Trade Rumors. That number would likely bump up to the $11 million range a year from now. Given the prices of starting pitching in free agency, that’s tremendous value and bang for the buck for the Phillies if he can stay healthy. Two years of Luzardo might end up costing the Phillies $17M, whereas two years of lesser pitchers with less upside like Frankie Montas and Matthew Boyd cost the Mets and Cubs $34M and $29M, respectively.

Every dollar matters for the Phillies this offseason, as outlined here. With their luxury tax situation, they’re essentially paying double for every player they add until more money comes off the books next winter or unless they can unload some payroll before then.

Of course, the Phillies also paid a prospect price, sending the 19-year-old Caba to Miami. He just got his first taste of Single A in 2024 and was unlikely to help the Phillies for a handful of years. They are very much a win-now team, and Luzardo is a win-now player who didn’t cost them their heralded trio of Andrew Painter, Aidan Miller and Justin Crawford.

The Phils are also getting a minor-league catcher in the deal: 27-year-old Paul McIntosh, who took 480 plate appearances at Double A last season in the Marlins’ system.

The Luzardo addition will push the Phillies’ payroll to approximately $305 million from a luxury tax perspective. This is past the fourth and highest threshold which carries the harshest penalties. The Phils were already paying 92.5 additional cents on every dollar spent past the third limit of $281M, which is why the one-year, $10M contract for Kepler will actually cost closer to $19.25M.

The luxury tax penalty above the $301M threshold is 110 cents on every dollar of overages, so even a $5M player right now would cost the Phillies about $10.5M.

The bulk of their offseason work is done, though. They’ve added starting pitching upside and depth with Luzardo, they’ve replaced one of the two late relievers they lost to free agency with Romano and brought in another outfielder they hope can seize an everyday job in left field in Kepler. There is a calculated risk and reward for all three. With an inflexible payroll and roster, the Phillies knew they’d have to be creative.