DENVER — Ranger Suarez is usually efficient, but Ranger Suarez on getaway day? Against the worst team in baseball? With a home plate umpire whose strike zone hearkened back to the 1990s?
It’s a winning formula and it worked for the Phillies on Thursday afternoon as they beat the Rockies, 2-0, to complete a sweep. The Phils had back-to-back series against the two worst offenses in baseball, the Pirates and Rockies, and won all seven games.
On Monday, the Phillies came back to beat the Rockies with eight runs in the final three innings. On Tuesday, they led wire-to-wire. They never trailed on Wednesday, homering three times and scoring nine runs. And they shut the Rockies out in Thursday’s 2-hour, 19-minute series finale.
“The day we don’t score many runs, we really pitched well and played good defense,” manager Rob Thomson said. “It was very satisfying.”
Suarez had only one 1-2-3 inning but ran few deep counts and began the sixth inning at just 64 pitches. He left with two men on base and two outs in the bottom of the seventh for Orion Kerkering, who popped Hunter Goodman up on one pitch to keep the Phillies up by two.
Suarez delivered 6⅔ scoreless innings and has excelled in his last three starts, allowing three runs in 20⅔.
“Good,” Suarez said of his outing, “especially in this type of environment where your pitches don’t do the same thing they usually do movement-wise. The cutter was working well. … As I keep pitching, I’ll keep feeling better.”
Suarez also benefitted Thursday from an extremely wide and at times random strike zone from home plate umpire Jonathan Parra. The Rockies had runners on the corners with two outs in the third inning of a scoreless game when Suarez threw a 92 mph fastball that was two full baseballs off the plate outside. Parra rung up Goodman, who might have argued more demonstratively if he wasn’t in such shock. Catcher Rafael Marchan was already throwing the ball back to Suarez and looked surprised himself.
Parra’s eyes deceived him again in the fifth when he called Jordan Beck out looking on a sinker that was below the zone and well inside. Beck was apoplectic, and Parra quickly motioned to Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer to come get his player before he ejected him. The Rockies are 8-42 but Parra was even worse on Thursday.
The Phillies’ first run was unearned, the result of a fourth-inning error by shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and an RBI double from Bryce Harper, who is 14-for-28 with four doubles, a homer and nine RBI during the seven-game winning streak.
They added another in the seventh when Kyle Schwarber led off with a walk and chugged all the way around from first base to score on a Max Kepler double. Kepler was cold in four straight series against the Rays, Guardians, Cardinals and Pirates but is perking up a bit, 5-for-13 with three doubles in the last four games.
The Phillies took advantage of Colorado’s blunders on the basepaths and in the field all week. The Rockies threw two would-be outs at first base into right field, had a catcher throw two balls into the outfield that advanced three baserunners and twice made an out trying to take an extra base when already down four runs. They aren’t just normal bad, they’re historically bad.
“It helped for sure but I think we played good baseball, too,” Thomson said. “We swung the bats very well the first three games, got some timely hits today, pitched very well today. I think we did capitalize but that wasn’t the main factor.”
Jordan Romano closed the game out, his ninth straight scoreless appearance, six of which have been 1-2-3. The Phillies swept the season series, winning all seven over the Rockies by an average score of 6-2. The Phils are 32-18 and now own the best road record in the National League at 15-10.
The Mets were off Thursday so the Phils gained another half-game and lead by two in the NL East. They have a chance to widen the gap this weekend when they face a skidding, last-place Athletics team while the Mets host the Dodgers.
“We’re rallying in the right way with our pitching, with our hitting,” Suarez said. “If we keep doing things the right way, we’ll be in a good spot.”
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