Nine innings, two hits, one run of support
Jesus Luzardo needed 109 pitches to finish what he started, and the Philadelphia Phillies handed him exactly one run to work with. It held. Philadelphia beat Atlanta 1-0 on Monday night at Citizens Bank Park and the left-hander walked off with the first complete game of his career.
Twelve strikeouts, two hits, one walk. Luzardo moves to 14-5 on a night when the margin never grew past a single swing. That line reads like something from another era of the sport: complete games have become a rounding error in the modern schedule, and a nine-inning shutout with double-digit strikeouts is rarer again.
Try it for $0.99.
Schwarber breaks it in the eighth
Grant Holmes deserved better than the box score gave him. The Atlanta starter allowed three hits and two walks over six innings, struck out six, and left with the game still scoreless.
It stayed that way until two were out in the bottom of the eighth. Kyle Schwarber got a fastball from Didier Fuentes and put it into the upper deck in right field. Home run number 43, the most in the majors, and his third in as many games. Fuentes drops to 5-2.
Schwarber has been the fixed point in this Philadelphia lineup all season, and the September version has not eased off. On Monday he needed no company either, because nobody else in the ballpark drove in a run.
What the split leaves behind
Atlanta came into the game having won three of its previous four and leaves with a four-game series shared. The Braves collected two hits across nine innings against a pitcher who never asked his manager for help.
For Philadelphia the value sits somewhere beyond the standings. A rotation arm who can take a game the whole way in the second week of September is a bullpen that gets a night off in a month when relief innings start showing the mileage. The Phillies got nine of them without spending anything, and that will be worth more in three weeks than it was on Monday night.
Discover the rest of our MLB news on MathODDS!
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply