PHILADELPHIA -- For more than a month now, Ranger Suárez has been, well, Ranger Suárez.
No overpowering fastball. No knee-buckling breaking ball. Little fanfare. Just casually strolling to the mound, mowing down opposing hitters and sauntering back to the dugout.
Suárez tossed yet another gem in Friday night's 8-0 win over the Blue Jays at Citizens Bank Park. He did not allow a run over seven innings while striking out six and walking one. He allowed only four hits while throwing 65 of his 94 pitches for strikes.
“Just vintage Ranger,” said shortstop Trea Turner.
Suárez now has four scoreless starts of at least six innings this season. That's not only the most by any Phillies pitcher, but only three starters across the Majors have had more such outings -- Tarik Skubal (six), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (five) and Sonny Gray (five).
Skubal and Gray have each made 14 starts. Yamamoto made his 14th on Friday night. Suárez has made only eight.
In other words, Suárez has held the opposition scoreless in half of his starts -- and remember, he had a disastrous season debut just a little more than a month ago. Sidelined by lower back stiffness for the first five weeks, Suárez was tagged for seven runs in just 3 2/3 innings against the D-backs on May 4.
He has allowed only seven runs (six earned) over 46 2/3 innings in seven starts since.
“It's just forgetting about the injury,” Suárez said via a team interpreter. “It's just focusing on where I'm at now, focusing from start to start and being mindful of where I'm at in the moment.”
Suárez's 1.16 ERA since May 10 trails only Pirates ace Paul Skenes (0.76) during that span.
“He gets into these strings, you know, where he's pretty dominant,” manager Rob Thomson said. “He really can command the fastball, and he was doing that tonight. Pinpoint control, a lot of strikes -- all the stuff was good.”
Though Suárez took a tough-luck loss in his last outing after receiving just one run of support, the Phillies made sure that would not be the case this time around. Kyle Schwarber hit a three-run homer -- his 22nd of the season -- to cap a four-run second inning and Otto Kemp later added an RBI single in the sixth.
The Phillies added on three more insurance runs in the eighth, but all they really needed behind Suárez was a single run.
This recent stretch is reminiscent of when Suárez got off to a remarkable start last season, going 10-1 with a 1.75 ERA through his first 15 starts. But he went just 2-7 with a 6.17 ERA the rest of the way while also missing a month in the second half due to a lower back issue.
“He's kind of like where he was last year at the start of the season,” Thomson said. “Now, we have to keep him there.”
To that end, Suárez’s velocity has dipped a bit over his past few starts. Now, obviously, he’s not a pitcher who relies much on velocity, but his average fastball and sinker velocity has been lower in all three starts this month than it was during any start in May.
In May, Suárez threw 101 pitches of at least 92 mph. He's thrown only six in June, including just two on Friday night.
Is that at all a concern?
“No,” Thomson said. “Because he can command the baseball and he commands all his pitches.”
Not even health-wise?
“No, no,” Thomson said. “He's fine.”
It’s worth noting that those two 92-plus-mph pitches on Friday both came in Suárez’s final inning – a sign that he had plenty left of the tank. He acknowledged he had some extra motivation behind those fastballs because he wanted to keep his pitch count low enough to potentially come back out for the eighth.
But therein lies part of the Phillies’ plan for ensuring Suárez doesn’t have a similar drop-off this season. Whereas he likely would have gone back out for the eighth inning at just 94 pitches last year – especially with left-handed-hitting Andrés Giménez due to lead off for Toronto – the Phils are being a little more cautious in 2025.
“That's a little more wear and tear,” Thomson said. “We've just got to be a little bit smarter about that.”
Suárez is OK with that. After all, he’s confident that the only thing that stands between “vintage Ranger” and 2024 second-half Ranger is health.
“Primarily, it's being healthy,” Suárez said. “I know what I'm capable of when I'm healthy. I know I'm capable of doing great things.”