CINCINNATI — Rob Thomson delivered a message to Ranger Suárez upon his arrival at Great American Ball Park: He was capping his starting pitcher Monday night at 80 pitches. The Phillies wanted out because the 28-year-old left-hander threw a 112-pitch shutout last week. “We’re just trying to take care of you,” the manager told him, “because it’s a long year.” Very good, said Suárez. He would get as deeply involved in the game as possible.
That’s how good the Phillies rotation is right now.
“I was actually thinking about taking him out after the sixth,” Thomson said after a 7-0 win over the Reds, “but he had so few pitches…it was just…that would be ridiculous. So I did. sent back.
“We were joking in the dugout,” catcher JT Realmuto said. “He’s going to go nine innings on 80 pitches.”
Suárez was content with seven games without a goal on 88 shots. He didn’t allow a run for 25 straight innings. The Phillies rotation, as a whole, has a 0.70 ERA in its last seven games. This is the final week for Suárez (two starts), Aaron Nola (two), Zack Wheeler (one), Spencer Turnbull (one) and Cristopher Sánchez (one):
51 2/3 IP, 24 H, 4 ER, 9 BB, 53 K, 2 HR
It’s absurd. It’s not sustainable. He has exhausted all superlatives.
“Pretty much,” Thomson said. “I don’t have the vocabulary to explain it properly.”
Maybe Realmuto does. He was behind the plate in every inning last week. Yes, greater tests await you. The Phillies won’t be able to bully the Rockies and White Sox every week. But the Reds can strike, and for one night, Suárez silenced them. This is only the third time in the last 29 years that the Phillies have started 15-8 or better. The rotation has a 2.14 ERA in those 23 games. These are banking victories. “There won’t be any sunshine or rainbows all season,” Realmuto said. No, but there are some items that can fuel the rotation throughout the summer.
Realmuto sees them.
“Right now, they’re just on another level,” Realmuto said. “Their work has been great. They command the strike zone. They do everything they need to do to be able to get deeply involved in games. But it’s no different than what they’ve done their entire career. Each of them.”
They…throw.
“That’s right,” Realmuto said.
They all have good things, but it’s not what most think about thing in 2024. Each field is not over-designed. The Phillies starters, with the exception of Zack Wheeler, do not dominate their opponents. There is a method for this.
“They are unpredictable,” Realmuto said. “Every one of them. And that’s part of pitching. That’s why we like to have starters that can do multiple things. We don’t have any starter that’s just a fastball slider.
“There are a lot of starters like that in the league who are two-pitch guys. If you’re right-handed, you get a fastball or slider. Our right-handers throw four or five different pitches from both sides of the plate to both batters. Same with our lefties. It’s just a matter of pitchability. Hitting is much easier when you have an idea of what’s coming. When you can eliminate things and know, “Hey, I have to choose between these two locations. I can sit on it.
“But when Ranger is pitching against you and he can throw literally five or six pitches to both sides of the plate, you’re just up there hacking. You have no idea. It’s hard to have a approach when guys are so unpredictable and can do so many things to you.
This looks fun.
“It’s so much fun,” Realmuto said.
Suárez peaked at 93 mph Monday night. He averaged 92 mph with his four-seam fastball and 91 mph with his sinker. His most used pitches through seven innings were curveballs and changeups.
“He probably didn’t feel like he had a good fastball after the whole game,” Thomson said.
“I never had a very good fastball,” Suárez said through a team interpreter. “Today felt like I always felt before.”
So he mixed it up. “He pitched tonight,” Thomson said. “Like, it was old school. You know?” The Phillies, led by pitching coach Caleb Cotham, have embraced modern ideas about pitching. They optimize mixes and pitch shapes. They track every bullpen session. They’re obsessed by the smallest details.
But along the way, the Phillies have achieved balance with their starters. It’s a new concept. Suárez, still on the cusp of an exceptional season and perhaps the author of it now, could embody that. He hasn’t allowed a run in 25 innings. This is the longest scoreless streak by a Phillies pitcher since Cliff Lee’s 30 2/3 streak from August 17 to September 10, 2011.
“I mean, he’s got a good mix of pitches,” Reds outfielder Stuart Fairchild said of Suárez. “He throws the pellet and he locates it, and then he takes the knife away so it goes into your hands as a right-hander and as a left-hander. He has a good changeup and breaking ball as well as a change of pace pitch. So yeah, he just does a lot of different looks. Lots of different angles and shapes and not much missing in the middle. It’s a very good combination for going out.
It seems easy.
“He’s not,” Fairchild said, “but he’s doing a really good job this year, that’s for sure.”
That’s Realmuto’s point.
“The plan is to always be unpredictable,” Realmuto said. “Execution doesn’t always allow you to be. If Ranger goes out there and doesn’t have his curveball – if he hits first, or if he hooks it and they hit it – our unpredictability disappears. You have to execute all these pitches to stay unpredictable.
Phillies pitchers have done their jobs to start 2024. Suárez appreciated the strategy behind his scoreless streak — the constant mix he discusses with Realmuto and the pitching coaches before each start.
“The more experience I get, I know which pitch to choose to pursue a hitter,” Suárez said. “What to throw at him, what is he thinking about. So I think it’s because of the experience that I have.
None of this is a secret or a big revelation. This is how pitchers have handled lineups for decades. The Phillies aren’t reinventing anything. An exceptional week, that’s precisely it. But maybe the Phillies have discovered the formula for a successful 2024 launch:
Throw strikes. Create the correct secondary mixture. Look for weak contact, then strikeout if necessary.
The task now is to keep pitchers healthy – and unpredictable.
“You think of someone like Wheeler,” Realmuto said. “In the past, Wheeler could get a little predictable with lefties because it was mostly a hard fastball, breaking ball coming into you, hard cutter coming into you. Now he has the division going the other way. It’s just another thing a lefty has to think about about the whole stick. That type of unpredictability – they do it more now than in the past.
It’s not about being unpredictable like a gimmick; Phillies starters have legitimate arsenals with strong traits. They have secondary slots that rank well on some models. They can save that feeling for later, when it gets harder, and know that there is always a way.
Right now, from Realmuto’s perspective, it’s a beautiful thing.
“It makes my job so much easier when you can mix like that,” Realmuto said. “You can play with the hitters’ heads.”
— C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Ranger Suárez: Kareem Elgazzar / The Enquirer / USA Today)