Koepka primed for PGA three-peat?
The A’s hit another walk-off grand slam Tuesday night, their second of a season that is 11 games deep. This time around, it was Stephen Piscotty’s blast to center field that gave Oakland a 5-1 win over the Texas Rangers. But that’s not the story of the game. No, the focus should be the starting pitcher who picked up a no-decision.
Jesus Luzardo is 22 years old and it seems as if it took that long for him to make his first major league start.
But that long-awaited moment came Tuesday. Let me tell you: The kid was worth the wait.
He’s the ace that was promised. And that could well be the difference between this the A’s playing a few games and heading home in October or really contending for a World Series.
The A’s super-prospect threw 76 pitches in five shutout innings Tuesday, striking out five and only allowing two hits and two walks. But more importantly, he was buck nasty.
We’ve seen Luzardo in nine major league games before Tuesday, including three innings of postseason work, so we knew how good his arsenal is. But Tuesday was about seeing how he would actually pitch — if he was also a master of the art.
He wasn’t perfect — he could stand to throw a few more of his secondary pitches for strikes when behind in the count — but he showed that he has an elite feel for the game, too.
The fastball, changeup, slider combination is lethal — even on a night where the slider wasn’t all that crisp. Luzardo and catcher Sean Murphy’s mixing-and-matching was equally effective. As Dallas Braden pointed out on the A’s broadcast, Luzardo’s arm speed is the same for all three of his pitches (he also has a curveball, but he’s yet to throw it in 2020). That certainly looked to be true as Texas Ranger after Texas Ranger fell off balance in the batter’s box. Luzardo had guys guessing laughably wrong all night.
Luzardo is also a quick worker and that fast tempo augments his already elite changeup. He’s the 2020 edition of former White Sox ace and fellow southpaw Mark Buehrle — the key difference being that Luzardo has a fastball that can approach 100 miles per hour and Buehrle barely hit 90.
Don’t get me wrong — the A’s rotation was good before Luzardo joined it. But he could take it to another level.
Chris Bassitt has been fantastic to start the year, posting a 0.93 ERA in two starts. I doubt he keeps that up, but he’s an outstanding back-of-therotation option.
Mike Fiers and Sean Manaea haven’t found their best form yet (though Fiers was solid in his last outing), but both are reliable middleof-the-rotation guys.
And Frankie Montas has shown flashes of that dominant form he had last year. He was this team’s de-facto No. 1, but he seems best suited for a role as an elite No. 2 pitcher.
But Luzardo? He was built to be the Oakland ace. He’s the guy who you want on the mound in the biggest games, as he boasts the right stuff coming off his fingertips and between the ears, too.
“You’d never know it was the day he was pitching,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said of Luzardo’s temperament before Tuesday’s game. “If there were nerves, he didn’t show it. A lot of times the nerves will show up in the first inning and it was anything but.”
Asked the last time he remembered being scared, Luzardo quipped back without reservation.
“When I was eight, maybe nine,” he said. He was afraid of a Little League pitcher he and his friends called “Husky,” real name unknown, who threw so hard Luzardo feared one of the kid’s heaters would bruise him.
“I think that kind of scared me straight, to not ever be scared again,” Luzardo said.
The A’s have been oneand-done in the playoffs the last two years, in large part because they cobbled together starting pitching throughout the year and didn’t have a go-to No. 1 option for the American League wild-card game. In 2019, the A’s picked Sean Manaea to start. He was ineffective. In 2018, the A’s literally chose to go with Johnny Wholestaff (all bullpen pitchers) in the biggest game of the year.
It won’t be all smooth sailing for Luzardo. Seasoned pro hitters will land a few jabs and maybe a hook or two throughout the season. But don’t dismiss Tuesday’s performance as beginner’s luck.
This kid is special. And while there’s no winner-take-all wildcard game this year (and the A’s have no interest in playing in one anyway; they want to win the division), come October, my bet is that he proves how special he is when the A’s need him most.