Jesús Luzardo slithering into NL Cy Young conversation

With the reigning award winner underperforming this season and no other National League pitcher stepping up, Luzardo is gradually building a case for himself.

Editor's Note: I was initially proud of myself for coming up with this article headline. However, it has since come to my attention that "slither" is specifically used to describe snakes and organisms that move similarly to them. The verb isn't applicable to Jesús "Lizard King" Luzardo in any way. I regret the error and hope it does not distract from the content below.

I'll begin by saying that there is no comparison between 2022 Sandy Alcantara and 2023 Jesús Luzardo. Hopefully you savored every pitch Alcantara threw en route to becoming the unanimous National League Cy Young award winner because we may never see a campaign like that from a Miami Marlins starting pitcher again. It was a near-perfect blend of run prevention and volume.

Fortunately for Luzardo, the NL Cy Young gets presented anew every season. In the lefty's first fully healthy season as an MLB starter, he owns a 3.22 ERA, legitimized by his matching 3.22 FIP, with a 1.15 WHIP in 120.1 IP through 21 starts. With Alcantara and many of the Senior Circuit's most venerable arms falling short of their preseason projections due to ineffectiveness and/or injuries, that's good enough to put Luzardo in the thick of the race.

Luzardo had a career day on Sunday, striking out 13 Colorado Rockies batters over seven innings in a game his team absolutely needed to win. Despite an unprecedented workload, the 25-year-old isn't showing any signs of slowing down; on the contrary, he's expanding his pitch mix to stay ahead of his competition.

There is a heavy overlap between the leading Cy Young candidates and the Baseball-Reference wins above replacement leaders. Throughout the past decade, every AL and NL bWAR pitching leader with the exception of 2019 Mike Minor has been a Cy Young finalist in their respective league.

Luzardo has a shot to lead the NL in 2023. He enters Tuesday in a tie for third (3.0 bWAR), only looking up at Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers (3.1) and Marcus Stroman of the Chicago Cubs (3.1). Kershaw is on the injured list and will need several weeks to be fully stretched out as a starter again. A pending free agent on a sub-.500 Cubs team, Stroman could potentially be traded out of the NL entirely, and he's been trending in the wrong direction anyway with just one quality start in his last five tries. Tied with Luzardo at 3.0 bWAR, Blake Snell is a trade candidate for the disappointing San Diego Padres for the same reason that Stroman is.

I don't see Kershaw, Stroman or Snell as Luzardo's main adversaries, though. Right-handers Spencer Strider (Atlanta Braves), Zac Gallen (Arizona Diamondbacks) and Zack Wheeler (Philadelphia Phillies) were among the NL's most dominant starters in 2022. The league's leading strikeout artist on the league's best team, Strider has everybody's attention and his peripherals point to better run prevention moving forward. Unlike Luzardo, Gallen and Wheeler have demonstrated the ability to make 30-plus starts in a single season—you gotta be more confident in them maintaining their success in August and September than Luzardo because of that track record. There are others in striking distance, too.

Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom have each repeated as Cy Young winners in the recent past. But to find the last example of different pitchers winning the hardware for the same team in consecutive years, you'd have to go way back to CC Sabathia (2007) and Cliff Lee (2008) of the then-Cleveland Guardians.

Assuming that Luzardo starts every fifth Marlins game for the foreseeable future, his upcoming opponents will be the Detroit Tigers (Jul. 30), Texas Rangers (Aug. 4) and Cincinnati Reds (Aug. 9).