Ranger Suarez warming up, CC'ed by Liscense 2.0
As we approach the All-Star Break, the team stats leaderboards look a bit different than last year. The biggest difference is that the Phillies finished last year with the 12th-best ERA, while currently this year, they have the highest ranked team ERA. Not only that, but their 3.24 ERA is .38 less than the next lowest, that being the Orioles with 3.62. Now what on earth did the Phillies do to make their pitching go from the middle of the pack to the best in the entire league? Was it some big offseason signings? Did they sign a new outstanding pitching coach? Well, as it turns out, the answer is neither. The Phillies rotation is the same as last year besides the addition of Spencer Turnbull, and their pitching coach is still Caleb Cotham. Whatever is different with the rotation lies deeper into the numbers.
The Phillies have four main starters: Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez, and Cristopher Sanchez. Mainly Taijuan Walker and Spencer Turnbull have made up the rest of their starts. Taijuan Walker is the only pitcher out of this list who has not seen any success this season as he has a 5.60 ERA and a 1.49 WHIP, so his name won't be mentioned.
Spencer Turnbull, who has primarily been a bullpen arm this season, has started 7 games with great success. Overall on the season, he has a 2.65 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in 54.1 innings. For a guy whose job is to make a spot start here and there and come out of the bullpen for long relief, this is about as good as you can ask for. Last year, however, Turnbull, while injury-ridden, had a 7.26 ERA in 31 innings pitched last season for the Tigers as a starter. While I am sure the difference of being used primarily as a bullpen arm instead of a full-time starter has helped Turnbull's success, I would probably attribute most of his success to the addition of his sweeper pitch. His primary offspeed before was usually his slider, and he had moderate success with it. That was until 2023, when opponents had a batting average of .290 against it. In 2024, Turnbull slightly lowered the usage of his fastball and used the sweeper almost the same amount of times. This new sweeper usage resulted in an opponent batting average of .145 and 21 strikeouts, more than any other pitch in his arsenal. His sweeper averages 83.8 MPH, with 13.9 inches of horizontal movement, which is almost a whole inch above average. Also, due to the addition of his new pitch, his other pitches in turn have seen more success in their limited use, especially his curveball, in which he has added 2 more inches of vertical movement since last season.
Aaron Nola has been a staple of the Phillies rotation since 2015, and this year is no different. Oddly enough, however, he has the worst ERA out of the 5 starters I am talking about in this article. The thing is, his ERA is 3.38, which is 28th in the MLB currently among qualified pitchers. If the worst ERA in your starting rotation is the 28th highest in the entire league, you are doing something correctly. There is not too much to go into as Aaron Nola has been consistently good his entire career, although last year he did finish with an ERA+ at 97, just slightly below league average. Looking at Nola’s Baseball Savant pages from the past two years, there are few differences aside from him upping the usage of his fastball and his knuckle-curve, his two primary pitches. His pitch speeds are similar, his movement on his pitches are similar, and the rest of the pitch usages are similar. There is, however, a substantial difference in barrel % with 2023 being over 2% higher than 2024. There is only one substantial difference that I notice in his profile, and that is pitch location:
Top: 2023, Bottom: 2024.
These are his 3 most used pitches, and it appears in 2023 Nola’s main problem happened to be location, specifically the fastball. He kept finding the middle of the zone, and batters were taking advantage of those hanging pitches, as seen by a career-worst .407 xSLG. This year, he is back to pretty much what is his average, .372. Aaron Nola’s consistency and his veteran presence for the younger arms are extremely helpful aspects of the success of this rotation. He is only 31, and he will continue to be a consistent arm in the Phillies rotation for years to come.
The other consistently good Phillies arm has been Zack Wheeler. Since joining the Phillies in 2020, Wheeler has been one of the league's best arms. With the Phillies, he has finished top 15 in Cy Young voting three times and has made 2 All-Star teams. His baseball savant page shows him in the 75th percentile or greater for all main categories except BB% and GB%, of which he still places in the top 50%. Wheeler uses his fastball, his main pitch, 41.6% percent of the time this season, and opponents do not hit it too well, resulting in a .219 batting average on it. Wheeler is able to pretty consistently get strikeouts on all of his pitches, having more than 10 Ks on every pitch in his 6-pitch arsenal (according to Savant), minus his cutter. He allows very few barrels and when he isn’t striking out guys, he is limiting them to weak contact at an above-average rate. Since joining the Phillies, the Wheeler-Nola combo has been pretty devastating for the rest of the league and has been a major part of their success in recent years.
One of the biggest reasons this Phillies rotation is so much better than previous years is Ranger Suarez finally living up to his potential. That is not to say he has been bad up to this point, as he has not had a full season with an ERA+ below 100 yet. However, he has only pitched over 150 innings once in a full season. We saw a glimpse of his greatness in 2021 when he was in the bullpen for the Phillies, but they inevitably made him a starter. He ended up starting 12 games by the end of the season, finishing with an ERA+ of 308 in 106 innings pitched. Impressive as that is, it was not a full season of starting. This season, however, as long as he can stay healthy, will by far be the best season of his career. On the season, Suarez currently has a 2.58 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP. His ERA is not only the highest of the Phillies, but it is also the highest in the National League, followed closely by the previously mentioned Zack Wheeler. He has 106 Ks to only 23 walks and his ERA+ of 157 is currently the best in the MLB. As it stands, he is easily a top 3 Cy Young candidate. So what has changed for Suarez in the last year?
Looking at his savant page from 2023 compared to 2024, physically not much has changed. His pitch location, pitch distribution, spin rates, and velocities are all fairly similar. One difference I notice, however, is the increased vertical break on pretty much all of his pitches, specifically his changeup, going from 34.9 to 40.2 inches. With this increased movement, opponents are struggling much more, only hitting it at an average of .186, compared to last year’s .267. Besides the vertical movement on his pitches, however, there is not much of a difference in his physical attributes. The main difference lies in his percentiles. He saw an increase on every single one except fastball velocity, as his fastball actually got slower, which is not a bad thing in his case. The main percentiles Suarez exceeds in are BB%, where he is in the 86th percentile, Barrel%, where he is also in the 86th percentile, and Ground Ball%, where he is in the 91st percentile. These are all massive increases from their respective 2023 percentiles. Therefore, what Suarez has massively improved on is limiting baserunners, limiting hard contact, and most importantly, keeping the ball on the ground. That last factor specifically has led to him having a .354 XSLG, 50 points lower than the league average. Ranger Suarez is pitching in the Maddux way, where he is not going to overpower you with velocity or have one pitch that is his go-to pitch but rather relies on a 6-pitch mix where he can mix and match to keep the hitter off balance, leading to weak contact and easy outs. He is coming off arguably his 3 worst starts to the season, giving up 6, 5, and 4 runs respectively, but hopefully, with the All-Star break, he can bounce back to ace form.
The final pitcher to credit for the Phillies' success is also the most shocking, and that is Cristopher Sanchez. Sanchez was a reliever for the Phillies in 2021 and 2022 and made the switch to starter in 2023. In 99.1 innings pitched, he ended the season with a 3.44 ERA. This season, he has accumulated 103.1 innings as a starter, currently owning a 2.96 ERA and a 138 ERA+. He currently holds the 11th-best ERA in the MLB, yet somehow only the 3rd-best on his own team, again showing how impressive the Phillies have been. He had already performed decently well in 2023, so this improved success is not completely unwarranted but something must have changed for this to occur.
The crazy thing is that Sanchez is actually allowing more walks, more hits, and striking out less batters than in previous years. So where is his success coming from? Last year in 99 innings he gave up 16 home runs leading to a 1.4 HR/9. This season he currently has only allowed 2 home runs, resulting in a league-low 0.2 HR/9. Just like the other Phillies pitchers, he has been elite at limiting hard contact. He is rocking with a .355 XSLG, about 50 points below league average, a 4.9 Barrel %, about 2% below league average, and most importantly, a 59.9 Ground Ball %, about 16% above league average. His GB% is in the 97th percentile in the MLB which is extremely important for a starter’s success. The more the ball is on the ground, the better chance the team has at making the play. This weak contact is due to his ability to get players to chase, as he is in the 98th percentile in Chase %. He does not rely on velocity, as he does not even throw a fastball. Sanchez gets opposing batters to chase and roll over due to his elite movement on his pitches, having well-above average horizontal and vertical movement, as well as spin rates, on all 3 of his pitches (those being his sinker, slider, and changeup). He has consistently had great pitch location all season, keeping everything down in the zone. This commitment to keeping it down has admittedly led to an increase in walks, but more importantly, it is the reason his ground ball rate is so high. If Sanchez can make sure he keeps the ball on the ground and can avoid allowing too many baserunners, he will continue to see success the rest of the season and could cement himself into this rotation for years to come, creating one of the most dominant rotations the MLB has seen in a long time.
I am an Atlanta Braves fan, so writing this article was difficult to deal with, but I wrote it because it has been a very, very long time since MLB has seen a rotation that has been this dominant 1-5. The last time we saw a whole rotation have this much success is probably the early 2010s Tigers, and everyone remembers how good they were. Like it or not, this Phillies rotation has proven they are legit, and it makes them a scary team going into the second half of the season. When October rolls around, I would be more scared of the Phillies than any other team right now, and it is because of their World Series caliber rotation.
Sources
Baseball Reference
ESPN
Baseball Savant
NBC Sports
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