So it wasn’t the velocity, pitch type or the location that was the problem for Philadelphia Phillies’ left-hander Jesús Luzardo. There was a ton of confusion over what transpired for Luzardo on the mound. It appears that him tipping pitches heavily influenced the two massive implosions against the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, per MLB.com’s Paul Casella. Luzardo allowed 20 earned runs across those two outings lasting only 5 2/3 innings combined. Before the two starts, Luzardo was cruising, allowing only 16 earned runs in his first 11 starts to begin the year.

All that seems to be behind him after Luzardo took on the daunting test of the first-place Cubs and went six innings and finished with a line of one earned run, five hits, no walks and 10 strikeouts on 99 pitches. With him earning the win, he went to 6-2 with a 4.23 ERA in 2025. The major difference was Luzardo denying any chance of tipping pitches.

Prior to the previous two starts, Luzardo was dealing a 2.15 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP, that quickly ballooned to a 4.46 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP, wiping away a lot of the progress he had accumulated. There’s really no other explanation it could have been. Given just the placement of his hand out of his glove against the Brewers on May 31 compared to the Cubs Wednesday.

The numbers behind Luzardo’s last two starts were also alarming, specifically with a runner on second base. In his first 11 starts of the season, Luzardo held batters to a .143 batting average and .228 xwOBA with a 34 percent whiff rate, per The WARmonger on X. With a runner on second base in his last two starts while tipping pitches, batters went nine-for-10 against him. He also allowed an xwOBA of .734 while executing only a 12.5 percent whiff rate.

Luzardo has proven that he’s a dynamic pitcher when he’s on the mound so to see the back-to-back implosions just didn’t make sense. Luzardo’s stuff is nasty. How nasty? According to Statcast, his sweeper that he throws 26.3 percent of the time and at 85.9 mph has the highest whiff-rate in all of baseball at 47.5 percent. The next closest is 44 percent by San Francisco Giants’ flamethrower Jordan Hicks.

Luzardo has legitimate Cy Young stuff and this now allows Phillies fans to free themselves of thoughts of him being overworked or not as good as they had hoped. Luzardo himself was thrilled just to get back to what worked before, per Brooke Destra of NBC Sports Philadelphia.

“Just getting back on track is huge and a sense of relief of understanding that the stuff is still there,” Luzardo said, per Destra. “I feel great physically … and the adjustments that we made obviously worked, so we’re happy about that.”

Luzardo has made a compelling case to be the Phillies’ best No. 2 option behind Zack Wheeler this season and that seemingly has returned. The Phillies have World Series aspirations and with this behind Luzardo now, it’s time for him to come back into Cy Young form and be a horse for the Phillies.