Ranger Suarez flirts with no-hitter as Red Sox beat Marines 6-2 in series opener

After being swept by the Blue Jays in three games at Fenway Park, the Red Sox flew to Seattle where left-hander Ranger Suarez took a no-hitter into the seventh inning. 

Suarez’s dominant performance lead the Sox to it’s 30th win of the season, a 6-2 Red Sox series-opening victory over the Mariners.

“He was brilliant, yeah, brilliant,” interim manager Chad Tracy told reporters Suarez’s performance on Friday night. “It had no-hit feel, the way he was going.”

Suarez’s no hitter was broken up in the seventh inning after Mariners’ Josh Naylor doubled with one out. 

“Oh man, he was amazing,” Carlos Narvaez told NESN’s Jahmai Webster on the field postgame of catching Suarez. “I could smell the no-hitter.”

Suarez allowed just one hit, walked three and struck out five over 6 2/3 scoreless innings, where he threw 94 pitches, 55 for strikes.

“He works fast with Narvi, they looked in-sync, so I just felt like he mostly cruised through the outing,” Tracy said. “Started running out of bullets at the end, but he was – you couldn’t ask for more than what he did tonight.”

“Really, really good, really good overall,” Suarez told reporters through a team translator. “I had command of all of my pitches, and I was locating really well, so yeah, it felt really good.”

Suarez was perfect through the first 3 1/3 innings before issuing a one-out walk to Cal Raleigh in the fourth, the first Mariners baserunner of the night. He then retired the next eight hitters before running into trouble again in the seventh, when he walked Raleigh for a second time, surrendered a double to Naylor, and issued another free pass to Cole Young to load the bases. 

“When I was going into the seventh inning that was the first time that I thought about it, and once I realized that I was thinking about it, I knew it wasn’t going to happen,” Suarez said of the no-hit bid. “When you start thinking about it, it doesn’t have the same essence as the first six innings. Once you start imagining what could be, that’s when it doesn’t happen.”

It was Suarez deepest outing since throwing eight innings on April 17 and April 27, and his first scoreless start since May 14. Through 14 starts covering 76 2/3 innings, the left-hander owns a stellar 2.93 ERA.

When Suarez finally ran into trouble in the seventh, Tracy turned to Justin Slaten, handing him the first bases-loaded inheritance of his three-year major league career.

Slaten quickly jumped ahead of pinch hitter J.P. Crawford with two strikes before the count ran full. Undeterred, he went back to his cutter and froze Crawford for a called strike three, escaping the jam and preserving Boston’s shutout.

The Red Sox offense took advantage of Seattle’s unconventional two-starter approach.