How much do you want to pay Ranger Suárez?

On Tuesday night, Ranger Suárez put a tough test on the toughest test of the season. Suárez took over a hot Astros (they released 135 WRC+ in the last 14 days), which removed the left-handed (they were first in WRC+ vs. left-handed pitchers), and Suárez had little sweat. He threw 7.1 innings and allowed only three hits before Cooper Hummel parked his 99th game to the correct field seat.

The start might end with a sour taste, but Tuesday’s performance was the cherry above the 29-year-old Southpaw’s incredibly sweet run. In his last nine games, Suarez allowed eight runs. This is a good thing for the 1.17 ERA for nearly a third of the season.

But for some reason, I was never ready to believe it. Perhaps because his main fastball is below 91 mph, or lacks a gorgeous strikeout rate, or lacks a single pitch that is even divided by Quitt++ PitchingBot average. Most of the time, I think it’s because I think Suárez is a fundamental pitcher. He must be running right now, and he has been to these runs before. In his 2021 breakthrough game, he compiled 1.24 ERA in the final eight games of the season. And there are the first three months of 2024: 1.85 ERA in 99 innings.

I wrote part of these stretches, which was part of the pitcher who relied heavily on his excellent commands. When dialing in, Suarez is unreachable. When it’s less than a little bit, he can change levels suspiciously. However, after this latest extension, I began to wonder if the “Stripes’ pitcher” sold Suàrez Short. In a significant sample, his pitching is like one of the 20 or so best pitchers in the sport. Is he more than just someone who mixes hot streaks with mediocre performances?

This question is not just academic. This is Suàrez’s last season before free agents. Between Dylan Cease and Framber Valdez, there are obviously two starting pitchers at the top of this winter market. But if Suarez can keep that up, he might be the best of the rest. Did you surprise you with the 16th place in the pitching war since early 2024, ahead of Logan Gilbert, Michael King and Hunter Green?

Of course, this surprised me. But signing a nine-digit contract with Suárez requires undeniable skills (more rejectable?) than stopping the heater or the Framber’s power sinker. From a shape perspective, Suarez’s main pitch is very similar to that Framber’s sinker, but perhaps without the power modifier – Suarez’s sinker moves an average of 3.5 mph. Obviously, Suarez does not rely on speed. Then how did he do it?

Simple

Between Nick Martinez, Spencer Schwellenbach and Max Fried, these pitchers are fascinated by me. But Suarez is a little different. Unlike Schwellenbach and Fried, Suárez’s speed was below average. And unlike Martinez, he lacks a carry fastball to throw the top of the area. To succeed, he must work on the outer edge and shaded areas below his knees. Currently, he was walking precisely on the rope.

The Suàrez method of bedrock is the interaction between his pendant and cutting machine. Because he tortured left-handed batsmen, opponents tend to stack with the right as Astros did on Tuesday – he faced only 31 left-handed batsmen throughout the season.

The opposite sinking pieces are usually considered suboptimal, but Suarez stayed on the field while also having a lot of so-called strikes. This is due to his main goal being the outer edge. He focused multiple sinking pieces on low corners away from where anyone could punish the court:

Suárez smashed the cutter inside with the expectations of these broad sinkers with extreme effectiveness. These pitch tunnels are very efficiently together, moving along the same trajectory, and then split in all directions. When Suárez manages to get the court in the hands of a right-handed batsman, it is essentially helpless – of pitchers with at least 100 cutters this season, Suárez is ranked first in allowed exit speeds. This is a weak contact machine:

Both courses allow Suarez to succeed in early counts and create weak contact when lagging behind. But when he gained the advantage, he spins his two courts.

The curve ball is eye-catching, sagging at 74 mph and sags in the form of two plane movements. There is nothing else out of reach in Suárez’s profile that can catch batsmen off guard, although the stadium this season isn’t as successful as it has been in the past few years. Even with suspicious validity in a vacuum, pitch enhances his overall arsenal. (More on that later.) The curve ball is 17 mph slower and 14 inches lower than the drop, making it harder for hitters to lock in specific sports modes.

But this is the change of the best stadium in Suarez. He has thrown more this season than ever, and the increase in usage coincides with subtle changes. Just three years ago, the change of Suarez moved like his pendant, and there were seven ticking gaps between the two courts. Today, the Velo difference is more like 10 mph, and the pitch is now cut relative to the sinker.

This changing motor relationship is not common. I looked at each pitcher, with at least 100 settling pieces and 100 changes and noticed the gap between the horizontal movements of each pitch. Suarez got a “cut” of nearly five inches relative to his sinker, ranking fourth among all pitchers in baseball. Several of them are kick changes, with high depth relative to the sinker. In contrast, the changes in Suarez are the same as those in the sinking film:

result? Some are really ugly. No one will piece it together on this court. The batsman’s time is 35.9%, managed only when contacting.245 Xwoba.

Like Martinez, Schwellenbach and Fried, Suárez is more than just his sum. All of these tandem tones – the four products mentioned above, and the occasional four sellers – are absolutely confusing for hitters, because it’s Stephen Sutton Brown Baseball prospectus show:

Since Suárez threw many pitches on similar tracks on roughly equal tracks, the batsman had no choice but to guess. As shown in the figure below, Suárez is one of the best tunnels in Stephen’s Arsenal Metrics league:

He associates it with the Pinpoint command. Perhaps it can be clearly seen from the position map, but the model supports the narrative here. Suarez’s position + number this season is not at the top, ranking second among all pitchers with at least 50 innings. BOTCMD agreed to give him a 61 command level on the 20-80 scale.

This may only matter in margins, but Suárez is also more shaky than any pitcher, except for Brusdar Graterol. Look at how he made a random corner to this Agustín Ramírez grounder after he initially started it:

He never worries!

The Phillies booth can only laugh after this:

If you can lock in Suarez’s performance over the last year and a half (3.05 ERA and 3.21 FIP) over the next four seasons, he’s easy to get a 9-digit free agent deal. Is the team confident enough about this deep mix/command configuration file to make a big bet? This is a terrible claim. I feel very confident that Nick Martinez can repeat his 2024 performance, but so far, it’s not very beautiful. Martinez runs 4.40 FIP. What prevents Suarez from performing backing up like Martinez? What would happen if his pendant Velo dropped from 91 mph to 90 mph?

It’s hard to say. But when Suárez is one of these runs, it’s hard not to hide what’s possible.