For the second straight night, the Phillies spent the first four innings at Great American Ball Park doing their best impression of a team trapped in a baseball time capsule. Not a baserunner. Not a crack in the armor. Perfect-gamed … again.
Only this time, there was no dramatic late comeback brewing. Not with the way their bats slept through the Cincinnati humidity, before and after a brief rain delay. And not with the way Ranger Suárez pitched — because that became the story of the night, and maybe the bigger story for the month ahead.
The box score told one tale: 10 hits, six earned runs in 5 1/3 innings, two walks, three strikeouts. But the radar gun and the contact readings told another.
Suárez never hit more than 92.1 mph. Every one of his regular pitches was down at least a half-mile an hour from his season average, with his four-seamer dropping more than a full tick. Of 49 swings against him, the Reds missed only six times. Seven balls were scorched at 95-plus mph, five of them into triple digits. Too many pitches leaked back toward the heart of the plate. Too many stayed there.
It was another night in a post–All-Star break trend that’s starting to feel familiar. His ERA since the break ballooned to 6.59 — after posting a 5.65 mark in last year’s second half and 4.57 the year before.
That’s not the kind of pattern you want to see when your rotation plan already comes with fine print. Zack Wheeler has been managing shoulder issues and pitching without his best stuff. Taijuan Walker has been better but remains a wild card. And Aaron Nola — fresh off 11 strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings for Lehigh Valley — is coming back this weekend, likely Sunday or Monday. The six-man rotation whispers were already in the air before Suárez’s latest stumble. Now they sound louder.
But is this just about buying him an extra day? Or are the concerns deeper? Suárez has seen this movie before. How he fits into a postseason pitching staff is anyone’s guess. At the moment, the bullpen looks like a real possibility — except the version of Suárez we saw Tuesday night wouldn’t exactly profile as a late-inning weapon there, either.
And then there’s the other layer: free agency looming in November, the first of his career. The Phillies have six weeks to sort all this out while chasing a second straight NL East crown. That lead, by the way, was probably getting thinner as they packed for the flight to New York — the Mets were up big on the Braves by the time this one ended.
The ending? Cincinnati 6, Phillies 1. Bryce Harper spared them their first shutout since June 25 with a two-out, ninth-inning homer in the pouring rain — his 18th — off Sam Moll.
By then, Brady Singer (10-9) had done his work. The Reds right-hander gave up just three of the Phillies’ four hits, struck out six, didn’t walk a batter, and faced the minimum through 5 2/3 innings. The only hit in that stretch — a Nick Castellanos grounder that glanced off shortstop Elly De La Cruz’s glove — vanished two pitches later on a double play.
Spencer Steer doubled home two runs in the third. Miguel Andújar launched a solo homer in the fourth — his second since the July 31 trade that brought him to Cincinnati. Steer added a sac fly in the fifth. Jose Trevino tacked on a two-run single in the sixth.
The rain came, the game paused for 28 minutes, the crowd thinned. And the Phillies — still in first place, still in the driver’s seat — headed into the night knowing they have more questions about their rotation than they did 24 hours ago.
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