With a little help, rookie Andrew Suarez blanks Phillies

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SAN FRANCISCO — A few hours after he returned to AT&T Park on Saturday, Hunter Pence talked about the growth process that comes with learning a new swing. The Giants are hopeful that Pence’s adjustments pay off, but it’s rare for players to make huge leaps in their mid 30s. 

It’s much more common for a 25-year-old to see constant growth, which makes someone like Andrew Suarez so exciting. He has the equipment — a fastball that regularly hit 94 mph on Saturday, a slider that can be a wipeout pitch, pinpoint command — and he has the makeup. He just has to put it together, and against the Phillies he did. 

Suarez needed just 86 pitches to throw seven shutout innings and Tony Watson and Hunter Strickland threw just 17 more. The Giants breezed to a 2-0 victory, their second consecutive shutout against a team that blew them out of a four-game set in Philadelphia last month. 

“I had a good feel for the ball today,” Suarez said. “Hundo called a great game and the defense made a lot of great plays.”

We’ll get to that defense, and the opportunistic leadoff hitter, but Suarez was the story of the night given the way Giants starters threw in May. He was part of that mess, but in his first June start, the young lefty showed how unflappable he is. That’s a big part of the reason the Giants have him up here. 

Suarez particularly showed his makeup in the fifth inning, when he didn’t break a sweat after the Phillies benefited from some good fortune. Carlos Santana led off with an infield single and Maikel Franco flared a broken-bat single to center. Suarez got a double-play ball from Nick Williams, but it was hit a bit too slowly, and Williams beat Brandon Crawford’s throw to first, putting runners on the corners. 

Suarez needed a strikeout, and he jumped ahead of Jorge Alfaro 0-2. The third pitch was a curveball that nosedived into the dirt in front of the plate, and Alfaro swung over the top of it for strike three. That brought Vince Velasquez to the plate, and while he was the opposing pitcher, he’s one of the better-hitting pitchers in the game. Velasquez entered hitting .333, but Suarez got him off balance with a series of breaking balls. With Velasquez leaning out over the plate, Suarez busted him with a 94 mph fastball on the inside corner, ending the threat. 

“He really had a lot of confidence out there and kept his poise there,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “He got a big strikeout and then got the pitcher. In a game like this, that’s the difference in the game.”

You could say the same for a play Andrew McCutchen made two innings earlier. With a runner on third, Cesar Hernandez smoked a ball to deep right-center. On the mound, Suarez was sure the Phillies had the lead.

“I was like, ‘Oh crap,’” he said later. 

McCutchen chased it down, though, making a highlight catch a few feet in front of the bricks. The ball had a catch probability of just 19 percent but McCutchen showed the speed that made him a top-notch center fielder for so many years. 

McCutchen also played a part in both runs, but Joe Panik gets most the credit for those. Panik showed his intellect twice on his second night back. In the sixth, he doubled, took third on Crawford’s grounder to second, and raced home when McCutchen hit a slow roller to third. Panik said he was going if anything was hit on the ground, and his hook slide — used so he wouldn’t expose his recently-injured thumb — beat the throw by a millimeter. 

Two innings later, Panik reached on an infield single. When Crawford hit a broken-bat single to center, Panik didn’t hesitate to break from first. He reached third and later scored on McCutchen’s sacrifice fly. Odubel Herrera is a strong center fielder, but Panik had gone back to watch film of a third-inning at-bat and noticed how deep Herrera was playing while robbing him of extra bases. When Crawford’s flare went into the air, he knew it would find green. Those two manufactured runs were all the Giants would need. 

“I take advantage of my legs when I can,” Panik said, smiling. 

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