Early season usage changes!
The Phillies are 5-1 but can’t score in the game’s first three innings. Go forbid they load the bases either. No team has it worse than the Phillies right now.
In all seriousness, there were plenty of good signs through the first week of the season. They will be tested against an undefeated Dodgers team over the weekend but the Phillies are off to a hot start.
Jesús Luzardo
Jesús Luzardo’s first start as a Philadelphia Phillie was a rounding success and proof of concept for what the Phillies envision. While Luzardo won’t be the most efficient starter in the world, he offers the high-end stuff to complement the rest of the rotation.
Luzardo toyed with a sweeper in spring training, but it became his favorite secondary pitch against the Washington Nationals last Saturday. With the offering, he generated seven whiffs on ten swings.
The sweeper averaged about seven inches of horizontal break (sweep) and 34 inches of vertical break. It’s a slight change of pace from his traditional gyro-slider, which drops more but has less sweep. He should be able to mix in both against right and left-handed hitters because they sit at 87 mph.
What will be interesting to monitor is what happens when Luzardo sees a more right-handed heavy lineup. He only threw 14 changeups on 95 pitches Saturday, a sharp decrease from his time in Miami.
Taijuan Walker
Taijuan Walker pitched six shutout innings in the year 2025. I’m sure everyone predicted this outcome.
Walker generated 11 swings and misses and allowed less hard contact than in years past. His splitter had a bit more action but the biggest changes came in his pitch usage.
Against right-handed batters, Walker started throwing a new slider with slightly less velocity than his cutter but with more sweep. He threw 17 of them. Then, he followed it up with 10 sinkers and generally avoided the middle of the plate and 7 cutters. He only threw a handful of splitters, curveballs, or four-seam fastballs. It was a pure east-west game plan.
To left-handed hitters, it was a much different story. He used early count cutters, threw 10 splitters, and worked in nine curveballs. He did not throw a single sinker or slider to left-handed hitters.
Platoon pitching has been a trend over the last few seasons but it is very different for Walker, who threw 33% splitters back in 2023, the last time he was a viable major league starter.
The other change was how much he abandoned fastballs altogether. Here were his combined sinker and four-seam fastball rate over the previous three seasons:
2022: 40.8%
2023: 40.8%
2024: 39.9%
In 74 pitches on Thursday, Walker threw just 16 combined sinkers or four-seam fastballs, which is good for about 22%. He leaned into every other offering to keep Colorado Rockie hitters off-balance.
What is the point? Walker is a different pitcher than he was two or three years ago and is finally accepting it. That is the life of a pitcher who has his major league career on the line.