Bohm stays hot, Suárez stays sharp as Phils stay having fun

SAN DIEGO -- Something had to give.

Phillies starter Ranger Suárez was riding a 25-inning scoreless streak. Padres starter Dylan Cease had won three straight starts and had posted four straight quality starts.

Turns out the Phillies had a tiebreaker streak.

Alec Bohm extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a two-run home run in the first inning to tip the scales in favor of the Phillies, who went on to a 5-1 victory on Saturday night at Petco Park. The Phillies clinched a series victory and on Sunday can earn their first sweep of a road series this season.

With Bohm’s streak intact, Suárez went about extending his.

The left-hander kept the Padres off the scoreboard for seven innings to push his scoreless streak to 32 innings. San Diego finally broke through when Eguy Rosario homered in the eighth inning. (The first two outs of the inning don’t count toward the streak since Suárez did not complete a scoreless inning.)

“Soft contact, stuff was really good,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “He had it all going. He was getting ahead of hitters and staying ahead of hitters. No walks all night. But I thought he had all his pitches going. … He's just having fun playing baseball right now.”

He’s not the only one. The Phillies needed only two hours, nine minutes to polish off the Padres as Suárez allowed only three hits and struck out eight. Neither he nor Jeff Hoffman, who handled the ninth inning, issued a walk.

What’s it like playing behind Suárez?

“It’s been fun,” Bohm said. “It’s a quick pace. He fills up the zone. There’s a lot of action. He’s not a guy going up there and pitching for strikeouts. He got quite a few tonight. But he’s attacking hitters. He gets soft contact. The infielders are fully engaged when he’s pitching.”

Thomson pointed to Suárez’s ability to repeat his delivery and, therefore, put pitches consistently where he wants them as the underlying reasons for the lefty’s hot streak. Suárez induced 11 ground-ball outs.

“Working every single day helps you build that type of consistency,” Suárez said via an interpreter. “It makes you feel comfortable when you build that every day.”

Suárez’s stretch of unblemished innings tied for the fifth longest in franchise history:

Grover Alexander, 41 innings, 1911
Cliff Lee, 34 innings, 2011
Larry Andersen, 32 2/3 innings, 1984
Dick Farrell, 32 2/3 innings, 1957
Ranger Suárez, 32 innings, 2024
Robin Roberts, 32 innings, 1950
Ken Heintzelman, 32 innings, 1949

Suárez fell short of matching the Hall of Famer Alexander with another pitching feat that has stood alone since 1911. Alexander remains the only pitcher in club history to pitch at least six innings with nary a run in four straight starts.

“My mentality right now is to help the team win,” Suárez said. “And we did just that.”

Bohm’s streak, meanwhile, is the longest active streak in the Majors, and he earned it in the most challenging manner. Right-handed batters were 1-for-52 this year against the right-handed Cease entering Saturday.

Trea Turner made it 2-for-53 with a broken-bat single before Bohm went deep on a first-pitch slider. Cease’s slider hadn’t been hit for a home run by a right-handed batter since April 5 last year, when J.D. Davis did it for San Francisco.

Bohm has batted .512 (22-for-43) with eight doubles, three homers and 16 RBIs during the streak.

“This guy Bohm, man, he’s one of the best right-handed hitters in the game right now,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “He’s seeing it and swinging it really well.”