Ranger Suárez has been a mainstay of the Phillies rotation since the middle of the 2021 season. He has pitched like a solid mid rotation starter during the regular season, and an ace in the postseason. For the first time in his career, he showed up ready to go in Spring Training, and he was dominant pitching 15 scoreless innings with just 5 hit and 4 walks to go with 16 strikeouts. He has carried that over to the regular season, with 17 innings with a league leading WHIP of 0.706 and 3 walks to 19 strikeouts to go with a 2.65 ERA.
Ranger is a man of many pitches (much like many of the Phillies arms), having shifted his slider to a cutter, more prominently added a four seam fastball, and added a curveball. None of his pitches stand out by stuff models and his velocity does not draw much attention either. What he has always had is a sinker with a low spin, good drop, and great command and then the rest of the arsenal to pitch off of it. He has been locating his sinker better in the zone. He has also turned to the pitch more after declining usage the last two seasons, at the expense of primarily his cutter, but really his whole arsenal. The pitch is performing better outcome wise, but not by a huge margin. If we use Baseball Savant’s XWOBA his sinker is currently at .297, down from .331 last year.
The pitch that has been dominant is his changeup. We don’t often pay much attention to pitch data in Spring Training, but all spring Ranger’s changeup was generating a high amount of whiffs per swing.
Additionally, he has thrown it much more frequently to left handed batters. Ever since remaking his arsenal, Ranger has thrown lefties a bunch of sinkers (>60%) and then mixed in his other pitches in moderation. Whereas vs right handed batters he was more four seam dominant and mixed everything but his cutter in greater than 20% of the time. This season he is throwing the sinker more to right handed batters and decreased the usage of his other pitches, but against left handed batters he has used his sinker less and has actually thrown them his changeup 25.6% of the time. His changeup has always performed well against lefties, but it has been his best pitch in small sample size so far this year against them.
Now, it has been 3 starts and a grand total of 28 changeups, so the sample size is very small and might not be worth writing about except, the pitch is different. From Brooksbaseball here is the Vertical Movement and Horizontal Movement on all of Ranger’s pitches since 2021.
The blue dot on it’s own is 2024 changeups. The pitch has less run and more drop, putting it less as a strict compliment to his sinker, and now to both of his fastballs. What is more, Ranger throws his sinker primarily center of the zone height and armside, so in to lefties and away from righties. From that spot, his changeup was going to either just be a chase pitch off the zone to righties or possibly drop into the down and in zone to lefties. Now he is pounding the bottom middle of the strike zone and below, dropping under the bats of righties and away from lefties trying to get to the inside fastball. What it appears he has done is change up the grip and how he is throwing it, because what he has done is kill the spin on it, causing much less movement overall. IVB or Induced Vertical Break is how much a ball rises, or really you could say, resists falling. High IVB on a four seam fastball gives that explosive life that a pitcher like Spencer Strider or Gerrit Cole has. In general more IVB is good, except if your pitch is caught in an average movement profile, until it isn’t. Both Ranger and Cristopher Sánchez succeed when their primary pitches come in steep and drop. What Ranger has done is add two more inches of drop to a changeup that already drops a good bit, and now it is disappearing under bats.
| Year | Pitch Speed (MPH) | Spin Rate (RPM) | Armside Movement (in) | Vertical Movement w/o Gravity (Savant’s IVB) (in) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 85.0 | 1491 | 15.2 | 6.5 |
| 2022 | 84.9 | 1522 | 14.6 | 5.9 |
| 2023 | 82.9 | 1447 | 13.7 | 4.9 |
| 2024 | 82.1 | 1259 | 9.5 | 2.9 |
So far this has made Ranger’s changeup a real weapon, but it is a small sample size of results. But the change is real and it looks intentional.