Phillies’ Luzardo, Thomson Emerge as ESPN’s Award Favorites

A 2025 MLB awards watch article from ESPN highlighted a pair of Philadelphia Phillies as the front-runners to win major awards, but it may not be who you think.

Jesús Luzardo Surges to the Top of the NL Cy Young Race

Bradford Doolittle listed Phillies pitcher Jesús Luzardo as the favorite to win the NL Cy Young Award with an AXE rating of 133, which was three points ahead of Zack Wheeler, who came in at No. 2.

Luzardo was a top-10 prospect when he reached the majors with the A's in 2019. While Luzardo has had some solid moments in the bigs as he has moved from the A's to the Marlins to the Phillies, this is the pitcher the prospect wonks envisioned. Everything is better: more strikeouts, fewer walks and a home run rate so low it barely registers. Luzardo's rise has more than compensated for the early struggles of rotation mate Aaron Nola.

The 27-year-old lefty has a 2.15 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and 77 strikeouts in 67 innings pitched this season.  The Phillies acquired Luzardo with catcher Paul McIntosh on December 22 from the Marlins for shortstop Starlyn Caba and outfielder Emaarion Boyd.

Luzardo wasn't the only Phillie who was favored to win an award.

Rob Thomson Leads ESPN’s EARL Rankings for Manager of the Year

Manager Rob Thomson was also the front-runner, according to the EARL ratings, to win the Manager of the Year Award.

The Phillies were expected to contend, to be sure, but have outperformed their run differential by three wins to date and are a sparkling 10-4 in one-run games. This system likes those things. Marmol has been rising fast as the Cardinals surge into surprising contention. He, Counsell and Melvin are more conventional candidates than Thomson.

 

Kyle Schwarber Cracks ESPN’s MVP Watch List

When it came to National League MVP, Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber was listed as No. 10 overall with an AXE rating of 124.  The front-runner, Pete Crow-Armstrong, has an AXE rating of 138.

Schwarber is off to a great start this season, hitting .253/.396/.567 with 18 home runs, 41 runs scored, and 40 RBI.

Understanding the AXE and EARL Rating Systems

AXE

AXE is a rating system developed to combine the results from the leading publicly available value metrics to create a consensus evaluation of each player. These include bWAR, fWAR, win probability added and championship probability added. The ratings for each system are combined using standard scores and weighted to best fit the current standings

EARL

The manager version of AXE (EARL) considers factors that tend to influence postseason balloting in this category, like winning above/below preseason expectation, outperforming run differential, performance in close games, etc. It should not be viewed as a measure of managerial ability.