Oakland Athletics: Ushering in the Jesús Luzardo Era, pitch by pitch

Conclusion

While I’d like to take the massive leap here and say that what we saw last night was undoubtedly confirmation of a surefire Hall of Fame-caliber career, it’s just one outing.

But boy did it look good.

In three innings of work, Luzardo threw 36 pitches, 22 of which were strikes, and retired nine of ten batters. Only two balls were hit hard.

Jesús Luzardo seemed to have a good gameplan and was executing on pitches around the edges of the zone in each of his three innings of work. There were only a handful of times where his pitches caught too much of the zone.

And even then, the movement on those pitches got him out of trouble.

He’s a quick worker that looks to try and get into a groove as quickly as he possibly can. This isn’t anything exclusive to his Major League career — he would often settle in and dominate in his AAA outings as well.

A huge boost had to be that Sean Murphy was behind the plate and had worked with Luzardo before while they both played with the Las Vegas Aviators.

But it’s the tools that Luzardo brings that make him so unpredictable to batters. He threw all four of his pitches extremely well, with his two-seamer looking to cause all kinds of trouble for hitters. His slider could be thrown in and out of the zone successfully as well.

While sustained trends will be important, the fact that we can finally — and definitively — say that Jesús Luzardo has an insane spin rate on his pitches is a great sign.

For the majority of his pitches, he sat comfortably at around 2500 RPM, going as high as about 2900 RPM with his two-seamer. The combination of slinging in the high-90’s with that spin-rate creates all kinds of swings and misses.

Baseball has trended toward being a league that’s all about creating these swings and misses, and Luzardo’s elite spin rate paired with his ability to throw hard is a recipe that’s proven successful for guys like Justin Verlander and Trevor Bauer.

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If Luzardo is able to sustain this and can continue feeling confident throwing in the zone to get ahead of hitters, then he’s going to strike out a lot of batters.

Frankly, it’s tough to wrap your mind around the thought that a starting pitcher has this devastating of a repertoire of off-speed pitches to go along with a two-seamer like his.

We may not end up seeing Jesús Luzardo get a start with the Oakland Athletics this season, but it’ll only be a matter of time before people start speculating that he may be the Opening Day starter come the 2020 season.

What comes next is a tricky roster shuffling act by the A’s front office, who will need to pull a lot of strings to get Jesús Luzardo on the postseason roster.

As it currently stands, the Oakland A’s may have to make the tough choice between bringing on Sean Murphy or Jesús Luzardo for the one-game playoff — a result of the fact that neither men were on the 40-man roster by the August 31 cutoff.

There’s still a possibility that both can make the cut if Stephen Piscotty remains on the Injured List. If he does, we may end up seeing that tandem — the tandem of the future — shutting the door in a high leverage, do-or-die game.

It’s the stuff that catapults teams into new eras; we may be at the precipice of one led by Jesús Luzardo.