TLDR: The Phillies placed ace Jesús Luzardo on the 15-day IL with left shoulder inflammation, but Don Mattingly says a playoff start is still in play.
The Phillies made it official Monday: Jesús Luzardo is headed to the 15-day IL with left shoulder inflammation, a move that's been coming for over a week now.
Talkin' Baseball@TalkinBaseball_Jesús Luzardo has been placed on the 15-day IL with left shoulder inflammation
This all traces back to September 7, when Luzardo threw the first complete game of his career, a two-hit shutout against Atlanta that took 109 pitches. The stiffness showed up after that outing and never fully went away, which led the Phillies to scratch him from his next scheduled start on September 13 rather than push it. An MRI came back clean, no structural damage, just inflammation, and the plan since then has been rest and anti-inflammatories instead of a cortisone shot.
The bigger number here is the one that made the Phillies cautious in the first place. Luzardo has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since the All-Star break, running a 1.84 ERA and 0.85 WHIP across 10 starts, and he's up to 178.2 innings on the year. That's exactly the kind of workload and form a team doesn't want to gamble with heading into October.
Foul Territory@FoulTerritoryTVThe Phillies have placed Jesús Luzardo on the 15-day IL with left shoulder inflammation. Don Mattingly told reporters that he isn't being ruled out for a potential postseason start.
The IL stint itself sounds worse than the outlook. Mattingly told reporters he isn't ruling out a postseason start for Luzardo, which lines up with the Phillies' cautious-but-not-alarmed tone since the MRI came back. Luzardo himself has made his stance pretty clear on this whole saga, saying earlier in the week that if it were Game 7 of the World Series, he's taking the ball no matter what.
Philadelphia landed Luzardo in a December 2024 trade after stops in Oakland and Miami, and he's turned into exactly the kind of front-of-rotation arm they needed. Shutting him down now, even for the minimum 15 days, is the Phillies betting that a healthy Luzardo in the NLDS beats a compromised one pitching through it in mid-September.
Watch for how the Phillies handle his next bullpen or rehab outing. If he's throwing without issue in the next week or two, this reads as a smart, low-cost precaution. If the stiffness lingers, the postseason conversation gets a lot more complicated in a hurry.