Chad Tracy building trust with players, lets Ranger Suárez go deep for Red Sox' third straight win

As Lou Brown once said in Major League II, “We won a game yesterday. We win today, that’s two in a row. If we win tomorrow, that’s called a winning streak. It’s happened before.”

For the Red Sox, it finally has.

The Sox have won three straight for the first time this season, fueled by a dominant outing from Ranger Suárez, who spun an eight-inning gem, one hit, one walk, and 10 strikeouts, against the Blue Jays on Monday night.

Boston shut out Toronto 5-0 behind a nine-hit attack, but the story was Suárez, who has now delivered two eight-inning shutout performances in his last three starts and is beginning to look every bit like the $130 million arm Craig Breslow signed in January.

In the wake of Alex Cora’s firing on Saturday, the Red Sox have been navigating a turbulent stretch, adjusting to interim manager Chad Tracy, a revamped coaching staff, and a renewed focus on climbing back toward .500 after a slow start.

With Monday’s win, Boston improved to 12-17 and remains in last place in the AL East, but now has a chance to secure the series in Toronto on Tuesday, and potentially climb out of the basement with a sweep.

Over the first five innings, Suárez was dominant, holding the Blue Jays hitless while facing the minimum. His no-hit bid ended in the sixth when Jesús Sánchez lined an opposite-field double down the left-field line.

“I wasn’t thinking about a no-hitter. I wanted to get quick outs,” Suarez said postgame. “That was my mentality, trying to get quick outs so I could go deeper into the game.”

The ball left Sánchez’s bat at just 83.3 mph, sneaking inside the third-base bag past a diving Caleb Durbin, ending Suárez’s shot at what would have been the 19th no-hitter in Red Sox history.

Suárez stranded Sánchez at second after the leadoff double, striking out both David Schneider and Tyler Heineman swinging before getting Myles Straw to fly out to right to end Toronto’s only real threat of the night.

“Obviously after the double, I have to reset and change my mindset for the run not to score. I think that was the only runner that got to scoring position,” Suárez said. “So my mindset was like to not let him score.”

Suárez carved up the Blue Jays lineup, keeping hitters off balance with a deep, well-mixed arsenal. He threw his sinker 28 times (27%), four-seamer 27 times (26%), cutter 25 times (24%), curveball 15 times (14%), and changeup 10 times (10%).

“When I’m able to command my four-seam and my sinker, I think that opens the door for my secondary pitches to get swings and misses,” Suárez said.

His cutter and curveball did the most damage, generating 14 and 11 swings, respectively, with the curve accounting for 45% of his total whiffs. 

The sinker produced a 39% called strike-plus-whiff rate, while the curveball wasn’t far behind at 40%, highlighting just how effective his full mix was throughout the outing.

“He was in the zone with everything,” Tracy said. “He got some strikeouts with three-ball counts on breaking balls. He got them to chase. He jumped ahead at times. When he fell behind, he got back in the count. He just commanded the game.”

Suárez relied on finesse as the strikeouts piled up throughout the night. The Venezuelan lefty struck out Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Eloy Jiménez, and Sánchez twice each, and fanned Schneider, Heineman, Straw, and Lenyn Sosa once.

“He started out at like 88, 89, and then it cranked up to like 92,” Tracy said. “But his ability to move the ball in and out, change speeds, elevate, go down below zone, get the ball on the plate, like, it’s really good.”

Suárez’s eight innings matched his season high, which he also reached last Friday against the Tigers to open a seven-game homestand. He didn’t factor into the decision in that outing, but Boston still won on Masataka Yoshida’s walk-off single in extra innings.“His pitches were unpredictable.

“With his stuff, for one, but he was all around the box,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said to the Toronto media following the loss. 

“Everyone's going to make mistakes, and when they do, you have to capitalize," added Schneider. "I think it was just a combination of not doing that, and him being pretty stubborn by not living in the middle of the plate. That was the story tonight.”

In the process, Suárez lowered his ERA to 3.09 after a rocky start to his Red Sox tenure, when he allowed eight earned runs on 13 hits over 8 1/3 innings across his first two outings, failing to get through five innings in either.

Tracy was aggressive with his