‘About to go on a heater,’ Suárez makes adjustments

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BOSTON -- The interview with Eugenio Suárez in the cramped visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park was briefly, and good-naturedly, interrupted by a teammate heading out for early cage work.

“Geno is about to go on a heater,” the teammate said, evoking a laugh.

The reference was to the encouraging signs that Suárez has shown on this road trip, a small sample size of six games, but with tangible results to recent adjustments -- both mechanical and mental -- that Seattle’s slugging third baseman has installed.

“When you're not getting your results, you start thinking too much and that's part of the problem,” Suárez said. “When I don't get my result, I'd be in trouble every time because I'd be trying too much. When I wasn't getting my results, almost everything I did, I was doing it harder.”

Suárez is 5-for-21 on this three-city weave that continues in Atlanta this weekend, dulled some with an 0-for-4 in Wednesday’s 12-3 loss at Fenway Park. But he crushed a 434-foot homer to straightaway center in Monday’s win, a signal to the tweak to his hand placement and correlation with his load, and has more walks (seven) than strikeouts (six), a token to the mental mend.

A breakdown of each:

Mechanical

Suárez’s hands are slightly in a lower spot, specifically, his back arm, which he says helps him get into the load to his lower body more seamlessly. It’s also helped him make more optimum contact and get the ball in the air better in an attempt to address his 40% ground-ball rate, his highest since 2016. When his back arm was higher, he was more susceptible to yanking pitches foul or punching them into the ground. Suárez is hitting .273 on grounders and .387 on fly balls and line drives.

“I don't think you'd ever make an adjustment to try to get more power,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “I've never seen that work. ... There's a lot of thump in that bat. There's a reason he's hit as many home runs as he has throughout his career and his ability to get the ball in the air and really drive it, and you're right, he wasn't getting the ball in the air as hard as we've seen him do in the past.”

The tweak is far simpler than it sounds; upper-body adjustments typically are.

“I'm just relaxing my shoulders a little bit more and trusting myself and my body. I’m just trying to cover the entire strike zone, not swing at balls, see the ball longer and put my best swing on it. I think that’s been my key the past few games.”

Mental

Suárez’s “good vibes only” are ubiquitous, but even for the happiest guys, that positive attitude can diminish with prolonged slumps.

Before Monday’s homer, he’d left the yard just thrice in Seattle’s first 37 games, which had him on pace for just 13 for the year, which would be far and away a career low for any of his full seasons played, even the pandemic-impacted 2020, when he hit 15 in 57 games. Suárez’s 164 homers since ‘18 trail only Aaron Judge’s 175.

“More than any player that we have, I believe, he keeps it even keel,” Servais said. “But even Geno, he's used to hitting homers and he looks up and he's got 100-something at-bats and he's only got three or four or whatever the number is, It's like 'OK, let's go, I need to get going here.’”

That said, Suárez was at his best last season when blossoming into the Mariners’ best situational hitter, particularly in the postseason push and into the playoffs. Like fellow run producers Julio Rodríguez and Teoscar Hernández, who’ve also looked more noticeably relaxed on this trip, Suárez has calmed his way to 13 walks this month to bring his season total to 23, second on the team to J.P. Crawford.

Strikeouts will always be part of his game, but mitigating those with more discipline and an on-base-driven approach should lead to him getting more pitches to do damage with. His on-base percentage in May is up 21 points to .343 and on this road trip, it’s .429.

No one better avoids the emotional rollercoaster of a six-month season in Seattle’s clubhouse than Suárez. But throughout that marathon, even he recognizes the need to make adjustments.

“I do think we'll look up at the end of the year, and his numbers are going to be there,” Servais said.