SAN DIEGO — Ranger Suárez made Phillies history in the Phillies’ 5-1 win on Saturday night, and he did it in his trademark, free-and-easy way. He didn’t throw a ball harder than 93 mph but managed to keep the Padres off-balance with his six-pitch mix. He induced mostly weak contact and a ton of groundouts and allowed only one earned run on three hits with eight strikeouts over eight innings of work.
When he allowed his earned run, a solo shot to Eguy Rosario, he snapped his scoreless innings streak at 32 ⅔. Suárez is now one of only seven pitchers in Phillies history who’ve pitched 30 scoreless innings or more, joining Hall of Famers like Steve Carlton and Robin Roberts.
It’s hard to imagine that matters a lot to him. Suárez brings a lightness to his game that is rare in athletes of his caliber. He is not a pitcher who needs to sit in silence before a start. He’s joking with his teammates in the clubhouse, or dancing to Cumbia music, or kicking a soccer ball.
Because of that, he can make the remarkable seem unremarkable. His teammate, Spencer Turnbull, remembers seeing this in spring training. They were doing pitcher fielding practice, or PFPs, and Suárez was flipping balls to first base as if he had all the time in the world.
Turnbull assumed it was something that Suárez only did in drills, but quickly realized that this is how the left-handed pitcher operates all the time.
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“Ranger is out there doing that in games, too,” Turnbull said. “And I’m like, ‘This kid is crazy.’ Just nonchalantly throwing no look passes to first base.”
He was no different on Saturday night. At the bottom of the fifth, Rosario hit a hard ground ball right back to Suárez, who fielded it on one bounce, paused, spun around on the mound, and threw it to Bryce Harper at first base.
Three innings later, Luis Campusano hit a soft dribbler toward Suárez. He crouched down, slowly scooped up with two hands, and delivered it to Harper. His unflappability is part of what makes him so good.
The Phillies did a lot of things right in this one. They did serious damage against a tough pitcher in Dylan Cease. Alec Bohm hit a two-run home run in the first inning and finished his day with two hits and four RBIs. Trea Turner went 3-for-5 and Nick Castellanos hit a single in the eighth inning.
But there were also little things that did well, that changed the scope of the game. With two outs in the fifth inning, Whit Merrifield hit a grounder to short and beat out Ha-Seong Kim’s throw to first base. Kyle Schwarber walked, Turner singled to load the bases, and Harper walked to plate a run.
Bohm’s second hit of the day, a two-RBI single, came in the next at-bat. It gave the Phillies a comfortable 5-0 lead. They are now 18-10 on the season and will go for the series sweep on Sunday.
