Jesús Luzardo whiffs 12, and the Phillies' bats pile on late to sweep the Mariners

Gabriela Carroll, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Aug 20, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PHILADELPHIA — Phillies pitcher Jesús Luzardo earned a few stray boos from the crowd after allowing a first-inning home run to the Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez.

By the time Luzardo left the game after a masterful six-inning, 12-strikeout performance, he got nothing but cheers from the 38,331 fans at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday. Luzardo’s performance headlined the Phillies’ 11-2 beatdown of the Mariners on Wednesday, completing a dominant three-game series sweep.

Luzardo‘s 12 strikeouts were a season high. He allowed just three hits and didn’t walk a single batter. The one blemish on his start was that first-inning Rodríguez homer, but it didn’t come on a bad pitch. Rodríguez dug the ball out of the dirt, just 0.71 feet off the ground — the lowest a Mariners hitter has hit for a home run in the pitch-tracking era (so 2008, at least) and the second-lowest in MLB since 2010 — to put the Mariners on the board.

Luzardo was especially effective with his sweeper, which he threw for 43% of his pitches and eight of his 12 strikeouts. He generated 11 whiffs with the pitch on 20 swings, and the Mariners struggled to make hard contact with the pitch when they did hit it, averaging just 75.1 mph on contact.

In the first series since Zack Wheeler’s surgery to remove a blood clot in his upper right arm, Luzardo showed what he’s capable of at peak form. After a stretch of inconsistency and poor results, Luzardo put together his fifth consecutive quality start, continuing to make his case that he belongs in the Phillies’ playoff rotation.

In the three-game series, the Phillies trio of Luzardo, Cristopher Sánchez and Ranger Suárez allowed five runs with 34 strikeouts in 19 innings. The 34 strikeouts is a Phillies record for starters in a three-game series.

Despite Luzardo’s strong start, the Phillies weren’t running up the score in support. They had 10 hits in four innings on Mariners right-hander Luis Castillo, but scored just three runs on a first-inning sacrifice fly by Kyle Schwarber, a second-inning double by Bryson Stott, and a fourth-inning home run from Max Kepler.

By the time Luzardo left the game, the Phillies had stranded 11 baserunners, and after David Robertson allowed a seventh-inning home run to Eugenio Suárez to pull the Mariners within one run, it looked like the Phillies would have to sweat out another close one after Tuesday’s nail-biter.

In the seventh inning, the Phillies’ bats finally brought the hammer down. Brandon Marsh, who, even with Nick Castellanos on the bench, got an opportunity against left-hander Tayler Saucedo, and worked a four-pitch walk.

Thanks to two Mariners defensive errors and RBI singles from Stott, Schwarber and Harper, the Phillies tagged on five runs. Schwarber hit a two-run home run in the eighth inning — his 45th — earning “M-V-P” chants from the crowd to put the Phillies up 11-2. Schwarber’s five RBIs upped his season total to 109, a career high, extending his MLB lead with 36 games left to play.

The Phillies had 20 hits, second-most this season only to the 21 hits in Monday’s 12-7 win over Seattle. That’s 48 hits in the three-game set, their most in a three-game series since 1999.

José Alvarado earned a big ovation from the Citizens Bank Park crowd in his first appearance back from a suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. He last pitched on May 16 against the Pirates. Alvarado worked a 1-2-3 inning in the eighth, including a strikeout of AL MVP candidate Cal Raleigh, and he hit 99 mph on his fastball.