Suárez eases into yet another tremendous outing, Phillies even series with Reds originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The ease in which Phillies pitcher Ranger Suárez approaches his profession brings to mind many past and current athletes whose results seem to far outweigh their efforts.

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Like a Fred Couples golf swing or a Steph Curry 35-foot jumper, Suárez goes about his business as if every outing is just a 60-foot, six-inch game of catch with J.T. Realmuto.

Suárez wanders off the mound with all the non-hastiness as if he’s been called to the principal’s office. After a foul ball is corralled by one of the ball girls, he’ll make sure they are all set before he throws his next pitch. He flips the ball in the air to himself before a pitch, seemingly oblivious to the fact a runner could advance if he misses his own toss. He doesn’t really wind up, more like he steps forward to the rubber and begins his pitch there.

No one is complaining about the ways Suárez goes about his business, of course, as he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball the past couple of months.

Not much changed with him on Saturday at Citizens Bank Park against the Cincinnati Reds, as the left-hander strolled through five innings and 80 pitches using a curveball in the mid to low 70-mile-an-hour mark, a changeup that hovered around 80 and a rarely used four-seam fastball that was low 90s. His pitches don’t pop Realmuto’s mitt the way his fellow starters do, rather his balls kind of land.

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Saturday’s performance by Suárez was slowed even more due to him being on an 85-pitch count because of some soreness after his last outing against Atlanta. Still, in his limited time, he allowed just one run on a Will Benson home run and struck out six. Three of the Phillies five hits left the yard en route to a 5-1 victory.

“I felt it in my last start in Atlanta, my body wasn’t feeling 100 percent so the pitch limit was because of that just to see how we progress and how we go forward, said Suárez. “It’s my shoulder and my back overall. I felt a little bit better, that’s why they told me we were going to have a pitch limit. But today was good overall. I felt way better.”

It’d be hard to tell if he had no feeling at all with the nonchalant, robotic way he goes about his business. Now in his last 11 starts, Suárez has a 1.23 ERA over his last 11 starts and hasn’t allowed more than one earned run in his last five games.

To say he’s earned a little bit of a break at this point of the season is a huge understatement.

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“It was designed,” said manager Rob Thomson. “In June he had six starts. Five of them were seven innings, one of them six innings, all of them 94 pitches or more. So we went in today just trying to pull back a little bit. So we had an 85-pitch limit today.”

Before finding out that the pull back was planned, there was wonder if something more was wrong. In his last few outings the velocity of Suárez’ pitches had gone down a little bit and yesterday it still wasn’t peak. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the pitcher nor his boss.

“I’m just looking up at the board but I saw a 93. So that was a good sign,” Thomson said. “I don’t really concern myself with that because he pitches. That’s what he did today. He threw strikes, first pitch strikes. The changeup was really good. A lot of soft contact, other than the (Will) Benson home run. He just missed location on that. I thought Ranger was really good today and I thought the bullpen was outstanding as well.”

Effortless without result was much of the Phillies offense early in the game and the reason Suárez departed without a decision. The only mustered two hits off Reds’ lefty starter Nick Lodolo, both by Trea Turner, in the first four innings. But Edmundo Sosa deposited a home run into the right field seats to tie it at 1-1, then Alec Bohm drove in Kyle Schwarber with a 400-foot bomb to left-center for a 3-1 lead. Not to be let out of the home run fun, Schwarber went the opposite way off Reds lefty Brent Suter on a 2-0 count in the 8th with Turner on first and the Phillies busted it open to a 5-1 lead.

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It helped that Thomson was able to use his high-leverage guys out of the pen as Jordan Romano, Tanner Banks, Orion Kerkering and Matt Strahm kept the Reds off the board for the final four. Though things got a little dicey in the eighth when Kerkering enticed Austin Hays into a tailor-made double play that was bobbled by Turner. But on the very next at-bat, Turner made a solid play to his left, stepped on second and threw to first for the rally-killing double play.

As for Suárez, there will be one more start before next week’s All-Star break and probably him going to Atlanta as part of the National League pitching staff. If he does get the nod, he said he’d love it and that he’d want to pitch in the game. But you just get the feeling that if he doesn’t, he’ll still have the same demeanor either way.

For now, the health of him and the other starters who have been so great in this “first half” of the season is a major focus of Thomson’s. Asked if any other starters might get some pitch limitations in the coming week, Thomson responded, “you’ll know when you see it.”

What we do know is that when we see Suárez take the mound of late, there is nothing but goodness that comes out of it.

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“Last season during the second half I got hurt, so the pitch limit was to see how we can progress to keep feeling better going forward,” Suárez said.

“I think I’ve felt pretty good overall throughout the season. I didn’t feel as good during my last start in Atlanta but it’s just that one thing that’s holding me back. I think we’re going to be able to go forward without (pitch limits). I think it’s more about being careful and not trying to rush it to the end of the season.

“I felt really good today. Great, actually. My changeup was great, the curveball and cutter too. Overall I think all of my pitches were fantastic today.”

And again, so was he.