ANAHEIM — While Shohei Ohtani continues to build on his incredible season, José Suarez gave the Angels a little more hope for next season.
Getting all the run support he needed from Ohtani’s major league leading 43rd home run, Suarez pitched the Angels’ first complete game of the season, beating the Texas Rangers 4-1 on Saturday night.
Suarez took a shutout in the ninth, seeking to become the first Angels starter to accomplish that feat since Andrew Heaney in June 2018. He gave up a run in the ninth, settling for the complete game.
Manager Joe Maddon said that he expected this would be a growth moment for Suarez.
“It’s one of those things, knowing young pitchers from the past, I want to see the next start,” Maddon said. “I want to see the carry over. This is what makes a pitcher a good major league starter… The takeaway is when you get ahead in the count, land the curve ball first pitch, don’t do too much, have a simple approach, you have to carry that with you.”
Suarez, who had never even finished six innings in a big league game, said he was thrilled to have such a breakthrough game.
“I feel extremely happy,” Suarez said through an interpreter. “I couldn’t believe I was still out there in the eighth inning. It’s very exciting to be out there so deep in the game.”
Suarez had never even finished six innings in his major league career, so this performance amounted to a major step forward in his bid to prove he is part of the solution for the Angels’ seemingly endless quest for pitching.
Suarez, 23, now has a 3.74 ERA in 77 innings this season, including 11 starts.
Suarez earned his way into the rotation with an impressive string of games as a long reliever in June, but since he’s been starting the results have been mixed.
Although he would often have stretches of effectiveness, inevitably a string of hits would knock him out of the game by the sixth inning.
Since joining the rotation, Suarez had a 5.53 ERA, which was not much better than his failures in that role in 2019 and 2020.
On Saturday night, though, Suarez seemed to put all the elements of his game together.
“He attacked the strike zone,” Maddon said. “He was in good counts all day. That’s what he had not been… He was outstanding.”
Suarez said that was exactly his goal.
“i have been trying to focus on that since my last outing, trying to attack hitters more and going after them and being more aggressive,” Suarez said. “I was focused on throwing strikes.”
He did not allow a baserunner until giving up a leadoff double to Leody Tavares in the fourth. Tavares then reached third with one out after an errant pickoff throw by Suarez, but Suarez stranded him there by striking out Adolis Garcia and DJ Peters.
Suarez worked around a two-on, one-out jam in the fifth and retired the side in order in the sixth, reaching a new high in innings pitched.
He retired the side in order in the seventh, and faced the minimum, with the help of a double play, in the eighth.
He was at 87 pitches when Maddon sent him to the mound in the ninth. Closer Raisel Iglesias was warming as the inning began, and Maddon said he planned to go to Iglesias if two runners reached base.
Suarez gave up a leadoff infield hit in the ninth, and it turned into the only run he allowed. He still finished the game with a career-high 100 pitches, stealing the spotlight from the previous night’s starting pitcher: Ohtani.Ohtani’s three-run homer in the sixth inning came a night after he had thrown a career-high 117 pitches. Maddon said before the game that he expected Ohtani to need the night off after the heavy workload, but Ohtani assured him he was fine.
The homer came after a 1-for-24 stretch for Ohtani, who has been in an offensive rut for most of the past month and a half.
“The last month I haven’t been really been seeing pitches over the plate where I could put good contact on it, but when I do I need to make sure I put a good swing on it and drive the ball,” Ohtani said through his interpreter on Friday night. “Otherwise, it’s simple. I just need to lay off of pitches that are close or are balls and swing at strikes.”
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