Jesús Luzardo dominated the best team in baseball and J.T. Realmuto played the role of closer as the Phillies handed the Dodgers their first loss of the season by a final score of 3-2. Luzardo fired 7 shutout innings with 8 strikeouts while allowing just two hits and two walks. Realmuto gunned down Shohei Ohtani trying to steal to end the eighth inning and threw out Chris Taylor trying to steal to end the game.

All hail the lizard king

Luzardo was in control from the start, retiring the vaunted top of the Dodgers lineup in order in the first inning and striking out the side in the second following a leadoff single. That started a string of 13 in a row set down by the Phillies left hander, as he made quick work of the Dodgers and had six strikeouts through five innings.

He allowed a one out walk to Andy Pages which put the tying run on first with Ohtani coming to the plate in the sixth. But Luzardo got Ohtani swinging on a nasty changeup in the dirt for his seventh strikeout and then picked off Pages to shut down the threat.

Luzardo ran into real trouble in the seventh after recording the first two outs. Teoscar Hernandez doubled on a bloop that landed in between Nick Castellanos and Bryson Stott before Will Smith walked. Hernandez then stole third to put the tying run 90 feet away with two outs. But Luzardo came back yet again to collect a huge strikeout, this time getting Enrique Hernandez swinging on a devastating slider on his 95th pitch of the night.

Small ball? In this ecomony?

The Phillies couldn’t get much going against Luzardo’s counterpart on the mound Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but a critical mistake for the young right hander in the first inning gave the Phillies an early lead.

Trea Turner doubled to left field and then took a running lead off second base. Yamamoto was extremely late to realize Turner was so far off the bag and then threw the ball away trying to get it to third base, allowing Turner to come around and score.

But that would be all the Phillies would get off of Yamamoto, who recovered to throw six innings and allow just three hits and three walks with five strikeouts and the unearned run. The Phillies struggled against Yamamoto’s splitter, whiffing on it five times on 20 pitches.

But as has been the case so far this season, the Phillies offense came alive once the opposing team went to its bullpen. Kirby Yates entered in relief of Yamamoto and promptly walked Max Kepler on four pitches before allowing a double to Castellanos to put runners on second and third with no outs in a 1-0 game. Yates rebounded to strikeout Realmuto for the first out, but Bryson Stott came through with an RBI single poked the other way through the drawn in infield to score Kepler.

Brandon Marsh followed with an RBI groundout to second to score Castellanos that avoided being a double play thanks to Stott being off and running towards second.

Luis Garcia then came in to relieve Yates and after intentionally walking Kyle Schwarber was able to strikeout Turner looking in a full count on a sweeper at the knees.