Jesús Luzardo is the kind of pitcher who can make a front office look smart or foolish in a hurry. The Miami Marlins got a taste of both sides of that equation, and now they may be hoping the next labor deal gives them a little more room to breathe.
Luzardo has taken off since the trade to Philadelphia. Over his two seasons there, he’s stayed healthy, sharpened his stuff, and just delivered the kind of outing that turns heads anywhere: a twelve-strikeout complete game shutout, the first time in his MLB career he went the distance.
The production has matched the flash. No pitcher in the National League has more strikeouts than Luzardo since 2025, and only one has more wins - his Phillies teammate Cristopher Sánchez. As of Friday, Philadelphia looks like a near-certain postseason team again.
For Miami, the return from that deal hasn’t shown up in the win column yet. The prospects the Marlins received have not helped the team win a game.
That said, there’s still time for the headliner, Starlyn Caba, who is already considered an elite defender and is only 20 years old. Even so, it’s hard to ignore the basic shape of the move: the Marlins probably would have been better off keeping Luzardo longer instead of moving him when his value was depressed by a back issue.
That’s where the business side comes in. Miami’s spending limits keep pushing the club into these kinds of decisions, and Luzardo was still two years from free agency when the trade happened.
The Phillies later handed him a five-year, $135 million extension last March, something Bruce Sherman would not have approved under MLB’s current financial setup. So Peter Bendix moved him before the situation could get even more expensive, making sure the Marlins got something back before Luzardo hit the open market.
There may be a path to fewer moves like that ahead. The league’s collective bargaining agreement is approaching expiration, and owners are reportedly aligned around a system that would include both a salary cap and a salary floor.
A higher minimum payroll could change the Marlins’ calculus. If a team has to spend anyway and isn’t positioned to contend, it becomes easier to take a swing on a high-upside player like Luzardo.
It would give clubs more margin for error. Right now, Bendix doesn’t have much of that, which is why the 2026 Marlins rotation was projected as Sandy Alcantara and a group of pre-arbitration arms making less than a million dollars apiece.
It wouldn’t erase the financial divide between big-market and small-market teams, especially with local revenues still so uneven. But it would be a step toward something fairer. For Miami, that kind of reform can’t come soon enough.
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