Ranger Suarez appears to be very close to making his season debut with the Phillies after his latest rehab assignment with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. The outing was the third of the left-hander’s return from a lower back strain he suffered during spring training and he made short work of the Columbus Clippers in five innings of work.

Suarez needed just 59 pitches – 40 strikes – to finish five innings of work for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. Along the way, Suarez allowed two hits, two walks, and notched five strikeouts. He threw first pitch strikes to 16 of the 20 batters he faced.

Suarez was not made available to the media following his outing, but the plan apparently is for him to pitch for Lehigh Valley again on Sunday and then likely return to the rotation for the Phillies.

Lehigh Valley got three runs in the first two innings to give Suarez a 3-0 lead before making it 5-0 in the fourth. Lehigh Valley went on to win 7-3. Buddy Kennedy, Oscar Mercado, and Rafael Lantigua collected two hits each with Kennedy also walking twice and driving in two runs. Gabriel Rincones Jr. drove in two runs in the game with an RBI single in the first and a sacrifice fly in the fourth.

On the mound, Austin Schulfer followed Suarez to the mound and threw a scoreless inning and Seth Johnson made his first appearance out of the bullpen to give Lehigh Valley two scoreless innings. Johnson had been in the starting rotation but may work as a reliever to give the Phillies another option for the bullpen at some point. Jose Cuas allowed three runs in 2/3 of an inning before Nick Vespi got the final out of the game. Cuas now has a 14.40 ERA on the season.

A confusing turn of events took place in the eighth inning when Guillo Zuniga came out of the bullpen to start the inning but left the field while throwing his warm-ups. Apparently, his name had not been included on the lineup card which made him ineligible to play, so he was replaced in favor of Cuas.