For his first order of business as a Phillies pitcher, Jesus Luzardo admitted over a media Zoom call Monday that his friends call him, “Zeus.” For his second order of business, he had to explain why his name is still held in high regard around the major leagues, even when he’s been doing a tour of it, of sorts. Luzardo, who started the opener of a 2023 wild card round for the Miami Marlins against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, was traded to the Phillies Tuesday along with a minor league catcher for prospects Emaarion Boyd and Starlyn Caba. It capped a busy, three-week stretch in which Phils president Dave Dombrowski made what he hopes to be a few key additions to his club. Among them are a potential closer in Jordan Romano, another free agent reliever in Joe Ross and free agent outfielder Max Kepler, who should start the season as the new left fielder. As for Zeus, a pitcher with A-plus stuff (high 90s fastball, late-breaking slider-curve), his list of new teammates keeps growing at an exponential rate, too. At 27, this is the third time he’s been traded. Old hat? “It’s definitely different,” Luzardo said of his frequent traveler status in pro ball. “The first time I was a little kid, basically. I was in rookie ball and didn’t know as much. Then I was caught a little more off guard coming from the A’s to the Marlins. This time, I could kind of see the writing on the wall.” Well, most Marlins can see that, since the organization makes it a common practice to shuffle personnel through its revolving front office doors. In Luzardo, however, the Marlins had a left-handed pitcher with electric stuff who has two years left on his contract under organizational control. Aside from the take that this trade was just the Marlins being the Marlins, it could be that they might think Luzardo was a bit of damaged goods. Coming off effective 2022 and ’23 seasons, Luzardo could only pitch into June last spring. He battled elbow issues along the way but what got to him was a “lumbar stress reaction” that affected his lower back. “Basically, it’s a vertebrae in the spine getting bothered by constant stress, constant rotation or, the lack of rotation,” Luzardo diagnosed. “At one point it basically gets really irritated and bothered. It bothered me in a lot of things; tying my shoes, bending over to brush my teeth, to rotating on the mound. It definitely affected me in a lot of different ways. “It was frustrating to try to maneuver that and still get out there and pitch every five days and it got to a point of where I couldn’t do it anymore.” But Luzardo rested the injury during the season and made multiple medical appointments that left him feeling confident the injury is now behind him. “After the shutdown, I took time off and every doctor I saw told me the same thing, that these things usually heal really well and once it happens once, it usually doesn’t happen again,” he said. “So it’s more of letting it calm down, letting it heal itself and once you do get back, you should be good to go and you shouldn’t have a problem with it again.” While that may sound a bit optimistic for a hard-throwing lefty, Luzardo stressed that his once stressed back now feels, “a hundred percent. “I felt a hundred percent the whole offseason,” he said. “Last year, definitely the back was the real root of the issue and the problem. Now that we have that all figured out, thankfully everything is back to normal.” But normal for him seems to mean changing teams. Born in Peru but raised in South Florida, he’s a 2016 graduate of Marjory Stoner Douglas High in Parkland and was on his way to pitch practice to the school’s baseball team when the shooting occured two years later. Luzardo was a third-round draft pick of the Washington Nationals out of school, and was shuttled to the Oakland organization out of rookie ball. He broke in for the A’s, pitching six games in relief for them in 2019 and making 27 starts in 2020-21 before being traded to Miami. He developed into a reliable starter there, logging 279 innings over the ’22 and ’23 seasons while winning 14 of 31 decisions and pitching to respective 3.32 and 3.52 ERAs over those seasons. But the injury problems last season limited Luzardo to 12 mostly troubled starts, going 3-6 with a 5.00 ERA. Now he’s looking for yet another fresh start on what should be a loaded Phillies starting rotation. “It’s always a change, a big change,” Luzardo said. “Your life kind of turns upside down, but definitely for a positive impact, I would say. And I’m looking forward to it.” One reason he’s eager to get going in Philadelphia were the memories of that wild card start two Octobers ago in Citizens Bank Park. He lasted only four innings, allowing three earned runs and eight hits while striking out five Phils. But it isn’t the game he remembers as much as the atmosphere. “Being able to witness the Red October, being able to pitch in that environment, being on the opposing side and now looking forward to being on the home side,” he said. “There’s definitely that home field advantage. And being on the Marlins I always looked forward to coming to Philly. I liked the food, I liked the city, I liked the fans. So it’s obviously somewhere I’m happy to be now.”