The great Kurt Suzuki homered, doubled, drove in four runs and, behind the plate, aided pitcher Max Scherzer through 89 worrisome back-from-injury pitches at Nationals Park on Wednesday night.
The “great” Kurt Suzuki? Well, sort of.
Suzuki, a modest, diligent, studious vet who only became a threat as a hitter three seasons ago, may be baseball’s least appreciated half-time star. In a sport more reliant on youth than ever, he is a true late bloomer.
Even “surfing” though a tunnel of his Nats teammates, then dancing the hula or the Bollywood after his home runs, Suzuki hasn’t garnered the kind of attention appropriate to his elite clutch production and pitch-handling gifts. In just 254 at-bats, he has 14 bombs and 52 RBI. To sense how good that is, feel free to multiply by two for a full year of a 150-game player.
Suzuki is, in a sense, the Nats’ backup catcher because he plays a hair less than 2018 all-star Yan Gomes. Some backup.
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“I have no ego,” Suzuki shrugged. Maybe he deserves to develop one, but it would clash with his personality. Some players are team first. Suzuki is team only.
Because Suzuki, who turns 36 in October, was known for his first 10 years as all brains and not much bat, long on durability but glad to be devoid of glamour, we need to smack everybody around with a few hard facts to do this guy justice.
This season, he’s second among catchers in RBI-per-plate appearance — he drives in a run every 5.38 times he steps to the plate. Manager Dave Martinez calls him “an RBI machine.”
“He has power, but he’s a wonderful situational hitter, too. ... It just drives him crazy not to get a man home from third base with less than two out,” Martinez said.
In the past three years, only the New York Yankees’ Gary Sanchez has driven in runs at a faster rate (among catchers with 750 at-bats). In that span, per 575 at-bats, Suzuki has averaged 30 homers and 100 RBI.
For stat-loving folks (who hate RBI as part of their religion), let’s look at wOBA (weighted on-base average), perhaps their favorite offensive number. Since 2017, Suzuki ranks third among catchers (.345), a hair behind Willson Contreras and Minnesota Twins masher Mitch Garver and ahead of the justly celebrated J.T. Realmuto and Sanchez.
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“I don’t strike out a lot. I fight guys,” said Suzuki, who’s understating, as usual. Since 2017, among all players who have enough power to hit a homer every 20 at-bats, Suzuki is the third hardest to strike out.
One of the pitchers who respected (but hated) Suzuki’s stubbornness, especially with runners on base, was Scherzer. “When he was in Atlanta the last two years, I saw how he competed, what a tough out he was for me,’’ he said. “Since he got here, he’s been so great.”
This year, with runners in scoring position and two outs, Suzuki is hitting over .400 — unsustainable but indicative.
Suzuki grasps every nuance of a career full of continuing hitting education, endless new drills, picking the brains of a dozen hitting coaches whom he never stops praising as if they swing his bat.
From Don Wakamatsu , Ty Van Burkleo , Brian Snitker and the Nationals’ Kevin Long, plus many others, Suzuki, piece by piece, learned how to hit with tension-free hands, drive the ball with backspin so it won’t hook and pull the ball in the air but without current launch-angle theories that exacerbate his natural swing tendency to hit too many popups. It took years to convince himself to look for counts “to do damage,” not just make solid contact.
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But the project is endless. On Tuesday, Nats assistant hitting coach Joe Dillon said, “You haven’t hit a home run in a while.” So Dillon suggested a drill to fix it.
“Getting my hands tight to my body,” said Suzuki, who credits Wednesday’s home run “to Joey.” If Suzuki could have let Dillon do the Nats’ dance line, he probably would have. Instead, he picked the Bollywood “for my friends from India.” By nature, Suzuki, born in Hawaii, is a natural multicultural clubhouse glue player.
Perhaps the closest new bond, one the Nats did not anticipate, is between superstar Scherzer and journeyman Suzuki. The pair have synced personally and professionally. In 15 games with Suzuki, Scherzer has a 1.83 ERA, by far the lowest of his career with anyone who has caught him for even a dozen starts. His ERAs with four previous Nats catchers over 131 starts range from 2.57 to 2.84. In eight games with Gomes, it’s 3.67.
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So this tandem may have some legs in D.C. Suzuki is signed through 2020. One of Scherzer’s oldest friends in the game, Aníbal Sánchez, already has Suzuki as his personal catcher; Sanchez’s career was reborn in 2018 in Atlanta after he and Suzuki applied analytics to drastically alter his pitch selection, sequencing and usage ratios. Sánchez signed as a free agent with the Nats — but not until Suzuki already had. After early-season mechanical glitches and an injury, Sánchez and Suzuki have teamed up for a 3.18 ERA in his past 15 starts, very similar to his 2.83 ERA last year as a pair. Pitcher whisperer?
Fortunately for the Nats, Suzuki and Gomes both seem to have natural battery pairings. Patrick Corbin always works with Gomes and is having a stellar season, helped by Gomes’s reputation as a marvelous handler of sliders in the dirt. Stephen Strasburg has clicked with Gomes, too. Erick Fedde has an ERA one run lower with Suzuki than all the other catchers who have handled him, but Gomes has done far better than Suzuki with Joe Ross.
How much of this is noise, how much signal? Baseball has a wonderful way of making you believe that almost every aspect of the game is filled with personality and psychology as well as athletics.
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Can an all-time great pitcher be improved by a special relationship with a simpatico catcher? Seems dubious. But some great pitchers believe it and act on it. Bob Gibson’s ERA in 1,614⅔ innings pitching to “personal catcher” Tim McCarver was 2.44. With every other catcher, 3.26 in 2,269 2/3 innings.
“I knew [Suzuki] had a really high baseball IQ from playing against him,” Scherzer said. “But now I realize it’s even way higher than I thought.”
“Max is the fiercest competitor I’ve ever been around. I try to match his intensity,” said Suzuki, whose demeanor hides a similar fire. He’s played on several teams but only chats up a few old friends on rival teams in season. “If I don’t know you, I want to bury you,” Suzuki said.
Of Scherzer, he said: “We’ve gathered respect for each other. Our personalities mesh. Sometimes I can fire him up. In games, he knows I’ll tell it how it is. And he can say anything to me. No problem. I don’t know everything.”
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If it were possible to know everything about baseball, Scherzer and Suzuki are two fanatics who would be up for the job. “We get deep with it. I’ve talked hours with him,” Suzuki said, grinning at “hours.”
“Max has got his math and all his calculations. He’s not grab, grunt and throw,” Suzuki said. “I’ve got all the stuff I’ve learned. We look for a balance — can’t go all analytical or all old school.”
Only one thing bothers Suzuki, but, since he’s a fitness fanatic, it’s not age or injury, despite being one of the more durable catchers of his time (1,469 games). He hates that baseball often takes him away from wife Renee, daughter Malia, 8, and sons Kai, 5, and Elijah, 3, who are “home in California. We want a stable life for our children. But I miss them.”
How does his wife feel about her husband’s old-age transformation into a sawed-off big bopper with a career that, as a hitter, is at its peak, not ending?
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“She misses having me around,” Suzuki said. “But she loves it. She says, ‘Ride the wave. Because when you are done, it’s going to be sad.’”
That’s for someday. This is for now — watch Kurt Suzuki and be very happy.
Read more on the Nationals:
Nats option Spencer Kieboom, limiting their catching options when rosters expand
Left-handed relief options looking up with Sean Doolittle, Roenis Elías nearing returns
The Nats’ offense — balanced, exciting and old-school — has been getting results
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