Eugenio Suárez Joins the Four-Homer Club, Albeit in Defeat

Eugenio Suárez had himself a night. On Saturday at Chase Field against the Braves, the Diamondbacks third baseman homered four times, becoming the 19th player in major league history to do so in a single game. The fourth of those shots tied the score in the bottom of the ninth, but unfortunately for Suárez and Arizona, his incredible performance wasn’t enough. The D-backs lost in 10 innings, 8-7.

The 33-year-old Suárez is the first player to homer four times in a game since another Diamondback, J.D. Martinez, did so against the Dodgers on September 4, 2017. Suárez is just the third player ever to homer four times in a losing cause — it happened just once over a 128-year stretch — and only the second to make just four plate appearances in his four-homer game.

Batting sixth, Suárez got his first crack against starter Grant Holmes with two outs in the second inning, crushing a low-middle four-seamer to putting the Diamondbacks on the board after they had fallen behind 2-0. In the fourth, with the Diamondbacks having just taken a 3-2 lead following Gabriel Moreno’s two-run single, Suárez went yard against Holmes again, this time against a four-seamer at the top of the zone. He got one more chance at the starter with two outs in the sixth; Holmes hung a slider and Suárez absolutely obliterated it for a 443-foot homer, his longest of the night, giving the Diamondbacks a 6-2 lead. With that, he also tied his previous personal best, having homered three times in a game twice before, first on September 5, 2020 against the Pirates while playing for the Reds, and then last July 30 with Arizona against the Nationals.

Alas, the D-backs bullpen couldn’t hold that generous lead, as Ryan Thompson served up a two-run homer to Eli White in the seventh and Jalen Beeks allowed three runs in the eighth. The Diamondbacks trailed 7-6 heading into the ninth when Suárez, facing Raisel Iglesias, battled to a full count and then smacked a high fastball on the outer third over the left field wall, tying the game.

Though Alek Thomas followed with a single, Arizona couldn’t break the tie. The Braves scored the go-ahead run on Justin Martinez’s wild pitch in the 10th, while Atlanta lefty Dylan Lee retired the side in order to send the Diamondbacks to defeat, their fourth loss in a row.

“Obviously there’s some mixed feelings right now because we didn’t win the game,” Suárez said afterward. “But this is baseball. That’s why this game is so special. … It’s a gift. I don’t take it for granted.”

The slugger recalled watching the four-homer game of his Reds teammate, Gennett, in June 2017. “I think that at some point [tonight] that came into my mind that I was there then and that was awesome to see Scooter hit four homers for us,” he said. “I always thought that has to feel really good to hit four homers in a game and today the dream came true.”

With Suárez and Martinez, Torey Lovullo became the first manager ever to preside over multiple four-home games. “I was left feeling the same way [regarding Martinez’s four-homer game] that I feel right now,” he said. “It’s awesome. You don’t see it very often, and you’ve got to appreciate it. You’ve got to really embrace this moment that you’re watching something special.”

The home runs gave Suárez the major league lead with 10, and ended a comparatively dry spell. After homering four times during the first three games of Arizona’s four-game series with the Cubs to open the season, and then again in the fifth game of the year, on April 1 against the Yankees, he fell into a dreadful slump. From April 2–24, he went just 10-for-72 with four doubles, one homer, and nine walks. Recently, however, he had started to show signs of life. Entering Saturday, he had collected hits in three straight games for the first time since that Cubs series, but even so, he was hitting just .167/.279/.411 (90 wRC+). Including Sunday’s performance (1-for-3 with a walk in a 6-4 win), he’s now up to .206/.313/.557 (135 wRC+).

For as bad as Suárez’s batting average and on-base percentage had been, he was hitting the ball hard even during that drought, with a 91.9-mph average exit velocity and a 52.2% hard-hit rate — but he also struck out 31.3% of the time during that stretch. His overall Statcast numbers, bookended by those two home run binges, are eye-opening. Aided by a some adjustments to his setup and stance, lately he’s been hitting the ball about as hard as he ever has:

Suárez’s average exit velocity and barrel rate both rank in the 93rd percentile, up from the 51st and 78th percentiles last year, respectively. His hard-hit rate ranks in the 95th percentile, up from the 63rd last year. For as early as it is in the season, we can start taking at least some of these numbers seriously. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carlton, exit velocity stabilizes at the 40 batted-ball-event mark and barrel rate at the 50 BBE mark (hard-hit rate not until 80 BBE), so what Suárez is doing not just a fluke. In fact, his 4.6-mph jump in exit velocity is the sixth largest in the majors:

Meanwhile, Suárez’s 15.2-percentage point increase in hard-hit rate ranks fifth, his 8.4-point increase in barrel rate eighth.

What’s happened to Suárez isn’t as simple as a single stance change. As I noted in this space last September, he turned a slow start around in midseason once he started using a Trajekt Arc hitting machine, which projects video of a pitcher’s delivery at game speed and marries it up with an accurate approximation of his offerings, including the release point and tempo. Before every home game, Suárez cycles through each pitcher’s repertoire. After hitting .196/.279/.312 (66 wRC+) with just six homers through the end of June, he batted .312/.357/.617 (162 wRC+) from July 1 onward, ranking eighth in the majors in SLG and 10th in wRC+ during that span.

Thanks to the recent release of Statcast’s batting stance data, we now have some additional quantitative insights to add regarding Suárez’s turnaround. A simple comparison of this year’s averages to those from last season shows that Suárez has moved closer to both the pitcher and the plate while opening his stance up considerably and intercepting the ball even further in front of the plate than before. (Except for stance angle, all batting stance data are measured in inches.)

While that’s interesting enough, the monthly data for 2024 (the most granular chronological breakdown available via the interface) show that these changes were gradual:

Unfortunately, the monthly splits don’t include the distance between his feet or the stance angle, but here’s a comparison juxtaposing last March/April and July, and then last September and this March/April:

There’s much less change in the latter comparison. By September, Suárez had already opened his stance to the 19-degree angle he’s currently using. As for some action shots, here’s a comparison between home runs he hit at Chase Field, starting with his first one as a Diamondback on March 30, 2024, with a stance that’s barely open:

Here’s one from September 1, 2024, with his stance much more open:

And here’s one from March 29 of this year, again with the more open stance:

Here are the stills from the beginning of each video:

As for his bat tracking data, Suárez is getting to his fast swing more often than he did even in the second half of last season. His swing has gotten longer, and while his squared-up and blast rates aren’t as good as they were in the second half of 2024, they’re much better than they were in the first half.

While Suárez is chasing pitches outside the zone more often than he did last year (28.9%, up from 26.8%) and swinging and missing more (13.3%, up from 12.8%), his 27.7% strikeout rate is virtually the same, over four points below his 2023 mark, when he struck out a whopping 214 times. It’s been an impressive evolution.

One big night doesn’t prove that Suárez is entirely back to his scorching 2024 second-half form. Even so, Saturday’s breakout helps to illustrate that despite his slow start, the changes he instituted last year are working. If he continues to hit the ball this hard, he’ll remain a force in the middle of the Diamondbacks lineup.