Trade details: Philadelphia Phillies acquire LHP Jesús Luzardo and catcher Paul McIntosh from the Miami Marlins in exchange for infielder Starlyn Caba and outfielder Emaarion Boyd
The Phillies get an easy upgrade to the back of their rotation with the trade of two prospects to Miami for Jesús Luzardo, who was among the best left-handed starters in baseball in 2023 before injuries ruined his 2024 season. The cost is fair value, including one of the Phillies top prospects in shortstop Starlyn Caba, but both prospects are so far away from the major leagues that it’s the kind of deal a contending team should make every day and twice on Sunday, which (checks calendar) it happens to be today.
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Phillies acquire lefty Jesús Luzardo in trade with Marlins
Luzardo might be the captain of the Good When Healthy team, but like most of his teammates on that roster, he’s not healthy often enough. His 2023 season was his first time ever qualifying for the ERA title — in fact, it was his first season of at least 101 innings in the majors, and only the third time in his eight-year professional career he’d thrown that much. That 2023 season saw him peak at 4.0 bWAR/3.8 fWAR as well, so there’s clear upside here that would put him squarely into any contender’s rotation if he’s 100 percent.
His 2024 started out badly, as he missed a few starts with tightness in his throwing elbow, then suffered a stress reaction in his lower back, a weakening in the vertebra that falls short of a fracture but is heading that way. He told MLB.com just a week ago that his body felt “like nothing ever happened” and that he should be good to go for spring training.
Luzardo’s stuff was down last year, but in 2023 he dominated with his four-seamer, sitting 95-98 mph and topping out at 99.2. Statcast ranked it as the ninth-most valuable four-seamer in the sport that year by run value at 15 runs saved. His slider has never graded out that highly, as he doesn’t spin the ball well and it is really flat, but it has more than enough history of generating swings and misses (52.7 percent in 2023, never below 41 percent in any season) to say it’s effective despite below-average spin and movement. In that 2023 season, left-handed batters whiffed on his slider 60 percent of the time they swung at it. He could probably have told them in semaphore that it was coming and still had success.
Luzardo has always had a plus changeup, so he’s good enough against right-handed batters to turn a lineup over two or three times, and I think he could probably improve a little there just by altering the usage of his pitches to righties — he leans too heavily on the slider and not enough on the changeup. The Phillies may not want to tinker too much with his pitch mix, but he seems like a good candidate for a cutter given his arm slot and his trouble getting high spin on any breaking pitch.
Regardless of whether they try to add a pitch, he’s a No. 2 starter if he’s healthy, and in the Phillies rotation, he’d be their No. 3 or No. 4 starter and allows them to plan around the potential departure of Ranger Suárez in free agency after the 2025 season. This probably also spells the end of Taijuan Walker’s time in Philadelphia, as the right-hander was atrocious in 2024, losing over 1 mph off his fastball and often pitching like he was still frustrated at Rob Thomson’s decision not to use him at all in the 2023 playoffs. Walker still has two years and $36 million left on his contract, which the Phillies will probably have to pay if they can find a taker at all. (There are a couple of teams that should be willing to give him a shot to see if he regains his lost velocity at all, like the White Sox or … well, the White Sox.)
The Phillies also get a minor-league catcher, Paul McIntosh, who’s 27 now and spent last year at Double A, hitting .246/.340/.385. He’s an organizational depth piece.
Shortstop Starlyn Caba is a plus defender. (George Kubas / Diamond Images via Getty Images)
The return for the Marlins is a long way off, but they went for ceiling here and that is the way to go in that market.
Switch-hitting shortstop Starlyn Caba might be a star if he continues to get stronger. He’s already at least a grade 70 defender with a plus arm and excellent instincts at the position. He played all of 2024 at age 18, turning 19 this month, and hit .254/.427/.335 in the Florida Complex League with a hilarious 2:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio, then continued to make contact at a high rate in Low A but only hit .179/.304/.190.
He’s just not strong enough yet to get to even decent-quality contact; in 26 games in the Low-A Florida State League his peak exit velocity was just 101 mph. He’s never going to be a power hitter, but he has the upside of a true leadoff hitter who gets on base at a high clip, runs plus, and puts the ball in the gaps with occasional over-the-fence power. I’d be shocked if he got past grade 45 power in the end, but I do think he’ll get to the hand strength to be a strong hitter for average and thus produce high OBPs. With his defense, that’s an All-Star.
Emaarion Boyd is more of a development project, having hit .239/.317/.331 as a 20-year-old in High A last year. The speedy outfielder was raw as a hitter when the Phillies took him in the 11th round in 2022 out of a Mississippi high school, and that’s still the case, although he’s shown he can make plenty of contact, with strikeout rates below 20 percent in each of the last two years.
He’s better right now when he gets something out over the plate, and needs to learn to impact the ball on the inner third, where right now he puts the ball on the ground a ton — over 60 percent of his balls in play on pitches on the inner third were groundballs, versus 41 percent on pitches on the outer third. He’s a 70 runner and can play all over the outfield. There’s a lot of development work here, from cutting down on his chase rate (34 percent) to getting him to turn on pitches inside, but there’s everyday upside if it clicks.
This may not be the return Marlins fans were hoping to see after Luzardo’s outstanding 2023 season, but it’s a really good return given Luzardo’s health and poor performance in 2024. His value might have gone up if he’d come out strongly to start 2025, but with only two years left to free agency and a giant question mark over his present ability and availability, trading him now for two high-upside prospects is a smart baseball move.
The Marlins aren’t winning anything in 2025, and they actually have some depth in their rotation, at least in guys who’ll need innings for development or as they return from injury. Sandy Alcántara should be back early this season from Tommy John surgery, and Eury Pérez could be back later in the year from the same. Both Edward Cabrera and Max Meyer missed time last year due to shoulder issues, with Meyer’s season ending due to bursitis. Ryan Weathers might be their only starter who’s locked into a spot right now, but he’s also coming off a season interrupted by injury, in his case a finger injury suffered while fielding. Luzardo might have been their best starter if he came back healthy, but they can use those innings to try to develop some of these other guys and/or work them back from injuries.
For the Phillies, this is a no-brainer — they traded two prospects who weren’t going to help the major-league team in the next three years, and the better of the two, Caba, plays a position where they have unusual depth, with two legitimate starting shortstops on the big-league roster, their best prospect (Aidan Miller) a true shortstop, and a couple of other shortstop prospects behind him in the system, including another elite defender in Bryan Rincon.
Luzardo carries some risk, for sure, but they didn’t have to give up Miller or Justin Crawford to get him. It’s a modest cost for the potential of a big payoff in 2025 or 2026, before Luzardo hits free agency. With Suárez a free agent after 2025, they’ve got some insurance in case he leaves, or could decide to extend Suárez this year and just let Luzardo play it out until he’s free to go. It’s a good situation for a team that’s looking at a $300 million payroll but wants to keep the window of contention open for a few more years.
(Top photo of Luzardo: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
