What started off as a festive evening for the Phillies and 41,683 of their closest friends turned futile in what seemed like a blink of an eye Friday night at Citizens Bank Park.<\/p>\n
The Phillies came out of the starting block with four runs in the first inning but ultimately could not hold the lead when starting pitcher Jesus Luzardo unraveled and was tagged for five runs in the fifth.<\/p>\n
The resulting 5-4 loss left the Phillies at 6-7 on the new season. They have lost three in a row and four of their last five. Their offense, which showed a brief and exciting flash of life Friday night, has put runs on the board in just one of the last 29 innings and the strikeouts \u2013 16 of \u2018em on Friday night \u2013 have piled up. Equally troubling: Luzardo has been whacked for 11 runs in 10 2\/3 innings in two of his first three starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it\u2019s very frustrating,\u201d the\u00a0pitcher said after Friday night\u2019s loss. \u201cWe go up 4-0 in the first and it feels like that should be plenty. Giving up five in one inning is unacceptable. Our offense did plenty for me today. It\u2019s my job to hold them to less than that and I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The night began beautifully for the Phillies. Luzardo struck out two in the top of the first inning. Trea Turner (single) and Kyle Schwarber (walk) reached base to start off the bottom of the first and Bryce Harper made it 1-0 with a double.<\/p>\n
Up came Brandon Marsh, who was inserted into the cleanup spot as part of a mini-shakeup by manager Rob Thomson. Marsh played the role of cleanup man perfectly by launching a three-run homer to left against Arizona starter Michael Soroka.<\/p>\n
Fueled by the early lead, Luzardo took over. The left-hander seemed to have no-hit stuff over the first four shutout innings. His fastball reached 98.6 mph in the first inning. He retired the side in order in the second inning then struck out four over the next two innings, giving him six through four innings.<\/p>\n
That no-hit stuff turned into hittable stuff in the top of the fifth and soon the Phillies\u2019 4-0 lead was a 5-4 deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the first two innings he wasn\u2019t getting ahead,\u201d Thomson said. \u201cThe third and fourth, I thought he was fantastic. In the fifth, he just wasn\u2019t getting ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jose Fernandez stroked the first hit against Luzardo, a hard-hit ball through the hole between shortstop and third base, to start the uprising. Luzardo walked the next batter before a poorly defended bunt hit \u2013 third baseman Alec Bohm was late breaking on the ball — loaded the bases. With one out, Ketel Marte smacked a high changeup to left for two runs. Ildemaro Vargas then hit a 97-mph fastball to left for an RBI single. Luzardo struck out Geraldo Perdomo on a 97-mph fastball for the second out before James McCann, just 1 for 14 on the season, drove a 2-0 sinker to right-center for two runs and an Arizona lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust falling behind way too much all game,\u201d Luzardo said. \u201cI felt like I was 2-0 on every guy, which is unacceptable, and it caught up to me in the fifth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luzardo, who signed a five-year, $135-million contract extension with the Phillies in spring training, has been a mixed bag in three starts. He was racked for two homers and six runs over six innings in first start of the new season. He followed that with a dominant outing in Colorado in which he allowed just a run and struck out 11 over 6 2\/3 innings. He built nicely on that for four innings Friday night. Then he fell behind hitters in the fifth, had to come over the plate and the you-know-what hit the fan.<\/p>\n
Luzardo\u2019s counterpart, Soroka, survived the first inning and did not allow another run over his 5 2\/3 innings. He struck out 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire team had a lot of swing and miss,\u201d Thomson said. \u201cThat was kind of our bugaboo. We started off hot. The first inning was really good. Then Soroka settled in. He started leaning on the curveball. It\u2019s a pretty good pitch for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arizona\u2019s bullpen notched six more Ks after Soroka departed. The 16 strikeouts were the most by the Phillies since opening day 2025 in a 10-inning win over Washington. In 13 games this season, Phillies hitters have racked up double-digits in strikeouts seven times.<\/p>\n
Marsh struck out three times after his first-inning homer. Bohm, dropped from cleanup to seventh in the batting order, also struck out three times and is hitting .170.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of those days,\u201d Marsh said. \u201cIt\u2019s baseball. You play every single day. A lot of at-bats, a lot of pitches thrown. They beat us by one today. You\u2019ve got to tip your cap. We\u2019ve got to be a lot better tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsh went on to say that the hitters were not pressing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of ball to play,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s early, man. We still have a lot of time to go to be great in the future. We\u2019re going to flush today and work on finishing \u2018em tomorrow. We\u2019ve got to be better finishing off the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was some late excitement for the Phillies. Rookie Justin Crawford tripled off the right-field wall with two outs in the ninth, giving the Phils some hope in a one-run game. Alas, Turner flied out and what started as a festive night ended in futility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What started off as a festive evening for the Phillies and 41,683 of their closest friends turned futile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[73637,69,71,70,17086],"class_list":["post-162965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-jesus-luzardo","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-phillies-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}