Quote from Randy Manese on March 21, 2022, 10:30 am

I've not seen him throw, but Baseball America listed him as the Padres' #13 prospect with a pretty much generic rating of 40 (they rated Kopps at 45).  However, this is the accompanying Scouting Report:  "Suarez has an imposing presence on the mound and aggressively goes after hitters with his plus-plus fastball.  His fastball lives at 96-97 mph and touches 101 with late explosion and ride, and he throws it in all quadrants of the strike zone.  Suarez developed an 88-92 mph split-changeup in Japan that flashes plus and has become his go-to secondary offering.  He relied on a short, titling slider early in his career, but it's now mostly a chase pitch.  Suarez attacks the strike zone with plus control and posed a carer-low walk rate of 1.2 per nine innings in 2021."

Previous to this write-up all I heard was that he is an extreme roundball pitcher and didn't give up a HR in 62.1 innings last year.  Given his velocity, this probably means weak contact and a lot of swing and miss.  HOWEVER, the JPL is not the MLB so we shall see if that same effectiveness carries over to the Padres in 2022.  BA predicts that he'll step right into the Padres' bullpen and become a high leverage option quickly.

Quote from fenn68 on March 21, 2022, 10:48 am

Pretty much agrees with the scouting report I saw. He really is someone to watch and COULD end up the end of game arm.

Think out of Venezuela ... went to the Mexican League the to Japan (think 2016) and been there since. Before 2020, not much but in 2020 became a closer (25 saves / 2.58 ERA) and then in 2021 (42 saves / 1.30 ERA). Plus there was a comment that he was consistently over the full season when most RP over there go hot and cold.

At 31 ... some concern but the Padres gave him $7MM on a one year deal (there is a second year with a player opt out) to out bid other teams ... so the scouts see something.