Ranger Suárez and Phillies shut out Cincinnati Reds, 7-0

CINCINNATI — On Monday night, shortly after pitching his third straight shutout outing, Ranger Suárez was asked if he remembered the last time he gave up a run.

“Of course,” He said.

“When?” He was asked.

“The first series against Atlanta,” he said. He paused and corrected himself.

“No,” he said. “Washington.”

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No one faulted him for his lapse in memory. It has been a while. After pitching seven innings of two-hit ball against the Reds in a 7-0 win on Monday, Suárez now has a streak of 25 straight scoreless innings. It’s the longest scoreless streak by a Phillies pitcher since Cliff Lee, when he threw 30⅔ scoreless innings from Aug. 17-Sept. 10, 2011.

It is fitting that Suárez and Lee are now intertwined in franchise lore. Although Lee used his arsenal differently, Suárez shows a similar blend of command and unflappability on the mound. He takes pride in pitching deep into games and he does it without a high-90s fastball. And in Lee-like fashion, Suárez worked quickly on Monday night. The game lasted only two hours and two minutes.

Suárez has become adept at mixing his five pitches to keep hitters off-balance. This leads to a lot of weak contact, which isn’t a problem for the calm-and-collected lefty. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Jeimer Candelario hit a liner right back to the mound, just above Suárez’s head. Suárez jumped up, reached out his glove, and snatched it in mid air. He grinned at his teammates as he walked off the field.

He was not grinning because it was a savvy defensive play. He was grinning because he didn’t think he had to jump all that high.

“It was like this,” he said after the game, pinching his forefinger and his thumb to illustrate how small the jump was.

Suárez went into his start on Monday with a pitch limit. He was coming off of a complete game shutout on April 16, and manager Rob Thomson wanted to make sure the left-handed pitcher didn’t over-extend himself. He told him he had 80 pitches, so Suárez — who still wanted to pitch at least seven — decided to be as efficient as he possibly could.

“I tried to make the innings as quick as possible,” he said. “I threw in the zone to get weak contact and get quick outs. I tried to throw pitches down in the zone, to get some grounders, so that helped me a lot, too.”

In his shutout, Suárez leaned predominantly on his sinker, but on Monday, he gave the Reds a healthy mix of curveballs and changeups. He threw all five of his pitches, but threw more off-speed pitches than he has in other outings. He shrugged at the notion that this was any different for him — “I’ve never had a good fastball,” he joked — but Thomson was impressed with his pitchability.

“He probably didn’t feel like he had his fastball, his good fastball, coming off the complete game,” he said. “But he just kept them off balance. The cutter was good, changeup got a lot of swing and miss. He pitched tonight. Like it was old school.”

Thomson said that Suárez ended up throwing 88 pitches because they were “free and easy” pitches. In a sense, the entire game felt that way. The Phillies got out to a quick 1-0 lead in the second, tacked on a run in the third, the fourth, and the fifth, and blew the game open in the ninth, on a Kody Clemens three-run home run. It was Clemens’ first big league game of the season. He was called up on Monday afternoon to replace Bryce Harper on the active roster, because Harper was put on the paternity list.

Clemens, Nick Castellanos, and Alec Bohm all had two-hit days. Johan Rojas, who is now batting .263, hit his first triple of the season. Bohm made a few nice defensive plays at third base, snagging a one-hopper from Tyler Stephenson in the first inning, and barehanding a bunt from Santiago Espinal in the fifth inning.

Espinal barreled it up too much, and Bohm, who was playing back, ran up, grabbed it and threw it to first in time to record the second out of the frame. He knows that on days when Suárez is pitching, he’s going to get a few more groundballs hit his way. But the progress he’s made defensively is not lost on him.

“I feel confident out there,” Bohm said. “I know that now it’s just playing the game and reacting, and not thinking about what to do or how to field the ball or whatever. It’s just see the ball, catch it, and throw it to whoever is standing over there at first.

“So, it’s been a long road I guess, it wasn’t always easy — and it’s still never easy — but it’s nice to have confidence out there, grab a glove, and go play defense.”

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The Phillies victory on Monday night was their seventh straight win. The first six came against some lackluster teams, but the Reds have a winning record, and took two-out-of-three from the Phillies a few weeks ago. A lot has changed since then. The bullpen is more stable, the bats are heating up, and most of all, their starters have combined for a 2.20 ERA. That, if anything, should set them up for success.

“I don’t have a vocabulary to explain it properly,” Thomson said of his rotation. “But it’s been great.”