Lefty Ranger Suarez Providing Phillies With Vexing Free Agent Decision

Forbes

2 days ago

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Ranger Suárez throws during the first inning of a baseball game, ... More Sunday, June 29, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
The Phillies' starting rotation is relentless, an unstoppable force that covers a lot of the team's weaknesses and will make them a very tough out in the likely event that the club reaches the postseason. You've got Zack Wheeler, quite possibly the best pitcher in the game, with all due respect to the Tigers' Tarik Skubal. You've got Cristopher Sanchez, evolving into one of the best all-around southpaw starters in the game. You've got Jesus Luzardo, who on his good days is as nasty as they come. You've got youngsters Mick Abel and (soon) Andrew Painter, both with big-time stuff and high upsides. And on the injured list you have Aaron Nola, one of the most durable, successful starters of the last decade.
And oh, by the way, you have lefty Ranger Suarez, who is on an absolute roll right now. He currently has a 7-2, 2.00, record in his first 11 starts, after missing the first month of the season with lower back soreness. Take out a poor first start and Suarez has a glittering 1.19 ERA since. He gives the club an absolute embarrassment of starting pitcher riches, making their decisions regarding his future more difficult than they already were.
In a vacuum, Suarez represents an incredible trade chip. He is a free agent at the end of the season, has an affordable $8.8 million salary for 2025, and might represent the cleanest path toward the shoring up of the Phils' weaker areas, like the bullpen and the outfield.
But the homegrown southpaw, if anything, has pitched too well this season for the team to even consider moving him. Plus, he loves playing in Philadelphia, for the only organization he has ever known. As the club works through their trading deadline calculus it is important to cut through the clutter of recency and figure out exactly what they have in Ranger Suarez.
Some guys get it done with raw stuff, others with guile and pitchability. The vast majority do with a combination of the two, though as is typical of most southpaws, Suarez focuses more on the latter. To me, he is the classic rhythm pitcher. Though his 6'1", 217, frame might not suggest as much, Suarez is an exceptional athlete, and one of the best defensive players at his position. Hitting is timing, and pitching is disrupting timing, and Suarez is one of the very best at getting in a rhythm and keeping hitters off balance.
I've often stated in this space that pitchers have three main jobs - missing bats, minimizing walks and managing contact. Durability, an ability to rack up innings bulk, is the cherry on top. Throughout his career, Suarez has only excelled at one of these facets - contact management. His K and BB rates have typically floated around the league average range, and though he's come close a couple times, he still hasn't qualified for an ERA title yet, with a season high of 155 1/3 innings pitched in 2022.
On the contact management front, he's never posted a below league average Adjusted Contact Score. His worst mark was 95 in 2023, his best, 71 in 2021. That was his silly good breakout season in which he posted a 1.36 ERA in 106 innings. Suarez has historically run grounder rates of over 50%, over a full standard deviation higher than league average, but the most significant driver of his contact management excellence has been an ability to throttle authority across all batted ball types. In 2021, his average exit speed allowed was 85.6 mph, over a full standard deviation lower than league average, and he hasn't been far off of that mark in successive seasons. Year in and year out, he limits opposing hitters to relatively weak exit speeds, across all batted ball types. Over his limited innings load, an average range K/BB profile combined with high-end contact management has provided the Phils with significant value above his manageable pre-arb and arbitration salaries.
Well, this year, when you peel back the layers and dig down into his overall performance on a granular level, Suarez has been every bit as good as his gaudy mainstream numbers. His K rate has bounced back a bit, to 23.8%, still in the league average range. His BB rate is a career-best 6.0%, over a half standard deviation lower than league average. Sure, he missed the first month of the season, but has averaged well over six innings per start, and if he can stay healthy, could log the 162+ innings needed to qualify for the ERA title for the first time.
And on the contact management front, he's taken things to new heights, and most of the enhancements appear real and sustainable. He is absolutely stifling contact authority across all batted ball types, better than he ever has. His 84.0 mph overall, 86.3 mph fly ball and 87.0 mph line drive average exit speeds are all career bests, and are all over two full standard deviations lower than league average. He has an amazing 65 Adjusted Contact Score to date, driving a 59 'Tru' ERA-, my batted ball-based proxy for ERA- and FIP-. That slots right in between his 48 and 70 marks in those more mainstream metrics.
His batted ball distribution has a couple of very interesting markers, one which is real and repeatable, and another which is not. Suarez is combining a well above average grounder rate (52.6%) with a measurably above average pop up rate (4.6%), which is very hard to do. He's getting those grounders with his sinker and changeup, while his curve and cutter are inducing the pop ups. More on his arsenal later. On the other hand, Suarez has posted an incredibly low 13.3% liner rate allowed thus far. Liner rates are notoriously volatile and don't represent true talent very well - expect that number to regress upward and his Adjusted Contact Score to take a slight hit moving forward.
Each year, I assign pitch grades for every qualifying pitch thrown by starters with 135 or more innings, based on their bat-missing and contact management performance relative to the league. Suarez qualified for pitch grades in 2022 and 2024, and never received an 'A' grade for any single offering. Like I said, he's not a stuff guy. He typically received average 'B' grades across the board, with his four-seamer (in 2022) and curve (in 2024) getting 'B+' grades, and his cutter (in 2024) getting a 'C+'. All of his offerings tended to fare better on the contact management rather than the bat-missing front.
Things have been a bit different thus far in 2025. Both his changeup and cutter have been 'A' grade pitches to date, with measurably above average pitch-specific whiff rates (19.2% for the changeup, 11.5% for the cutter) in addition to strong contact management performances. Interestingly enough, he's ramped up usage of those two offerings this season. He's still not a swing-and-miss guy, but his overall whiff rate is the second highest of his career, at 9.8%.
Why? Well, Suarez has become much less reliant on his four-seamer and sinker over the years. His four-seamer hasn't even been used enough to qualify for an interim pitch grade this season. In 2021, Suarez threw his two fastballs a combined 68.4% of the time. That's down to 41.7% in 2025. Now, that's simply an exaggerated version of the trend throughout baseball over that time span, but what is the floor for his fastball usage….you know, the point beneath which a changeup is no longer truly a change of pace?
Suarez is experimenting with that very concept as we speak, and has found a pretty lethal pitch mix that is confounding hitters. His sinker is currently a 'C+' pitch, simultaneously muting contact (73 Adjusted Contact Score) while almost never missing a bat (1.7% whiff rate). He's living right on a precarious edge - there aren't many pitchers who can get it done over the long term in this manner.
And that brings us back to his impending free agent status, and his potential availability at the trading deadline. As previously stated, with Nola on the shelf and the ability of Abel and Painter to immediately excel at the game's highest level in doubt, I don't think I could trade Suarez at this point. I'd also be a bit wary about giving him top of the market dollars and years given his unique pitch mix and lack of quantitative performance over the years.
But given Suarez' dedication to the organization, you might not have to. A three-year commitment at $15-20 million per season might get it done, and might be the sweet spot to keep the player happy while also offering the club the potential to reap value above the contract cost. Lefties are different to begin with, and Suarez is a different kind of lefty. He is arguably the foremost southpaw contact manager in the game on a per inning basis, and might just be on the verge of getting his innings bulk up to a more than representative level. His next three years should be very good ones.