The free-agent starter with a unique path to success

On a Phillies staff that featured the likes of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Cristopher Sánchez, it might’ve been easy for Ranger Suárez to fly under the radar in Philadelphia. But make no mistake about it: Suárez was one of the better pitchers in baseball over the last half-decade with the Phillies.

The 30-year-old Suárez reached free agency for the first time this offseason and while he might not be viewed as the clear-cut available top starting pitcher, he’s in the discussion, especially after right-hander Dylan Cease came off the board. And the numbers certainly back up his place there.

Among the 85 pitchers with at least 500 innings pitched from 2022-25, Suárez was a top-15 starting pitcher by ERA (3.25), FIP (3.55) and FanGraphs’ version of Wins Above Replacement (15.2). Add in his sparkling playoff résumé, which features a 1.48 ERA across 42 2/3 postseason innings, and Suárez will garner plenty of interest this offseason.

But Suárez, who ranked as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand’s No. 10 free agent at the beginning of the offseason, has achieved his success in a unique way in today’s pitching environment of record-breaking heat and physics-defying breaking pitches.

Here’s a look at Suárez’s path to success to this point and what we could expect going forward.

Low-end fastball velocity, elite command

Those who have followed Suárez know that the left-hander has succeeded with well below-average fastball velocity.

When Suárez burst onto the scene in 2021, he averaged 93.2 mph on his fastball, ranking in the 44th percentile. Since that point, Suárez has seen a steady decline in velocity, dropping to 91.2 mph on fastballs in 2024 before bottoming out at a career-low 90.5 mph this past season (7th percentile).

Despite that lack of zip on his heater, Suárez produced a career-best season across the board in 2025, setting personal-best marks with 157 1/3 innings and 4.0 fWAR, while posting his lowest ERA (3.20), FIP (3.21) and expected ERA (3.16) of any of his four seasons with 125-plus innings.

Suárez compensates his lack of velocity with elite command. His 5.8% walk rate in 2025 was a top-20 figure among starters (minimum 150 innings), but his impressive command goes beyond simply limiting free passes.

By FanGraphs' Location+ -- a count- and pitch-type-adjusted judgment of a pitcher’s ability to put pitches in the right place -- Suárez’s 113 mark was tops among that same group of pitchers with at least 150 innings. In 2024, his 111 Location+ only trailed two starters (Pablo López and Logan Gilbert). Put simply, few starting pitchers are able to put baseballs in optimal locations like Suárez.

You can see how well Suárez commands each of his six pitches based on his heat maps and the fact that he ran a 46.0 percent edge rate -- pitches that are, you guessed it, on the edges of the strike zone -- this past season.

A diverse and unpredictable arsenal

We might be doing Suárez a disservice by simply focusing on his fastball velocity. The lefty isn’t simply getting by on elite command. He also boasts one of the most diverse arsenals of any starting pitcher and is a king of unpredictability.

Suárez threw five different pitches -- a sinker, four-seamer, cutter, changeup and curveball -- at least 14% of the time in 2025. Yet, his most-utilized pitch, his sinker, was only thrown 28.6% of the time. That means Suárez had five pitches with a usage ranging between 14.6-28.6%, forcing hitters into a bind as they tried to guess which pitch was coming.

For left-handed hitters, the approach was simplified a bit, with Suárez throwing the sinker at a 45.7% clip, but righties saw those five pitches between 15.3-24.3% of the time. Considering that he faced 520 right-handed hitters compared to 131 lefties, a vast majority of hitters were dealing with remarkable mixing and matching.

Quantifying unpredictability in pitchers based on pitch usage, velocity and movement can be tricky, but Baseball Prospectus unveiled new pitch arsenal metrics this year that do exactly that. Unsurprisingly, Suárez rated extremely well by several of these metrics, which help us understand the pitchers who are hardest to gauge.

These are three of the key metrics Baseball Prospectus released and a brief summary for each, courtesy of BP’s Matt Trueblood, and how Suárez ranked in each category.

• Movement spread: The size of the area a hitter will feel they must cover, based on the likelihood of a pitch being any of that pitcher's possible offerings and the movement patterns of those pitches.
• Velocity Spread: The same measurement of distributed probabilities for movement, but with velocity.
• Surprise Factor: A rating of how surprising observed pitch movement was, based on the distribution derived for movement spread.

Suárez’s ranks for BP’s pitch arsenal metrics in 2025
Min. 2,000 pitches thrown (103 qualifying pitchers)

• Second in velocity spread
• Fourth in surprise factor
• Eighth in movement spread

Based on these numbers, we can safely say that opposing hitters have a tough time gauging the distribution of movement and velocity on the pitches Suárez throws. In simpler terms, Suárez is unpredictable for hitters.

Tough to square up

Suárez boasts elite command and is tough to gauge based on the velocity and movement of his deep arsenal. Even with subpar velocity, those strengths lead to some of the weakest batted-ball numbers of any starting pitcher.

Whether it’s hard-hit rate, barrel rate or average exit velocity, Suárez graded out at an elite level in 2025 and did so in 2024 as well.

Suárez’s batted ball ranks + percentiles, 2025
Min. 250 batted balls (151 qualifying pitchers)

• First in hard-hit rate (31.1 percent), 98th percentile
• Second in barrel rate (5.5 percent), 89th percentile
• Fourth in avg. exit velocity (86.5 mph), 95th percentile

This ability to limit quality contact extends back to 2021, a span during which Suárez has never allowed more than a home run per inning in any season. Since that point, he has allowed 0.78 home runs per nine innings, the sixth-lowest mark among all pitchers with at least 500 innings.

Long-term projection

Put it all together and Suárez is a pitcher who has elite command, creates matchup nightmares for hitters based on his deep arsenal and unpredictability and limits quality contact with the best of the best. That he’s done so with one of the slowest fastballs in the Majors is a testament to Suárez’s other skills as a pitcher.

Now comes the next question: How do teams view these skills and how long can Suárez maintain this type of production with this kind of fastball? Furthermore, if Suárez’s fastball velocity declines even further, potentially dipping below 90 mph, would he lose an edge in any of those categories where he’s excelled?

That question very well may be answered in the coming weeks. We already saw Cease, a stuff-over-command guy, get seven years and $210 million from the Blue Jays. What type of contract Suárez gets and who signs him will be a good litmus test for how his profile is viewed moving forward.

No matter what happens, he’s one of the most fascinating free-agent pitchers this offseason. Because of his outlier profile in today’s baseball environment, he’ll be an intriguing story to follow in the coming years.