Jesús Luzardo entered Saturday’s matchup against the Milwaukee Brewers with a 5-0 record and 16 earned runs allowed through 67.0 innings, which put him at an impressive 2.15 ERA. He led the National League pitchers in WAR (2.9) and was arguably the frontrunner for the Cy Young Award.

Well, the Philadelphia Phillies’ ace pitched his first stinker of the 2025 campaign this weekend. He went 3.1 innings against Milwaukee’s lineup, coughing up 12 hits, three walks and 12 earned runs, almost doubling his runs total in a single outing. Luzardo’s ERA now sits at a respectable (but far less impressive) 3.58 through 70.1 innings.

This is the sort of performance you can’t really afford in a Cy Young race. Every pitcher struggles eventually — his co-candidates in this race will eventually stumble — but Luzardo was a special kind of bad on Saturday, and Rob Thomson is catching flak for leaving him on the mound to give up eight runs in the fourth inning (while recording only a single out).

Phillies hang Jesús Luzardo out to dry — and hurt his Cy Young chances as a result

Look, is this really a catastrophic mistake on Thomson’s part. Luzardo was off from the beginning — he gave up four runs in the first inning — but Philly’s bullpen has been overtaxed of late, with José Alvarado’s absence continuing to loom like a dark cloud. With the game getting out of reach quickly in that fourth inning, one can hardly blame him for stretching Luzarado a liiiiittle bit and taking the loss, especially with the best record in the National League to fall back on.

As for the Cy Young case, yeah, it hurts. But Luzardo is still second in ESPN’s Cy Young predictor and sixth in FanGraphs’ Cy Young metric. This was a bump in the road, but his resume remains impressive on the whole, and Philadelphia’s overall success should aid his case. Zack Wheeler gave up six runs in 5.1 innings just a few days ago, his worst start of the season. It happens. Even the greats falter every now and again.

The Phillies have two bonafide Cy Young candidates, nothing any other team — aside from potentially San Francisco with Logan Webb and Robbie Ray — can claim. Pitching depth has been a strength for the Phillies all season. This has been a rotten week in terms of injury luck and general performance, but there’s no reason to think it won’t get better eventually. Probably sooner than later. This is not cause for panic.

Philly’s fandom has developed something of a love-hate relationship with Rob Thomson. He is clearly a top-shelf manager, but he still gets stick in his ways and is prone to the occasional misstep, just like all coaches (notice a theme here). Keeping Luzardo out was not the right decision for his Cy Young candidacy, but given the state of the bullpen and the rotation at large, you can argue it was the best baseball decision. That is more important at the end of the day, especially when an overworked bullpen can yield catastrophic results for weeks, rather than a single game.

Luzardo will bounce back — he’s a beast — but for today, and perhaps only today, Paul Skenes, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and other Cy Young candidates can breathe a sigh of relief.