He showed up for spring training this year au naturel, his normal dark hair.
Then he started the season 0 for 16 and for three weeks his average hovered around .100.
Time for a trip to the beauty salon. Suarez returned to the silver-gold locks and his offense turned to gold again.
On Saturday night in PNC Park, Suarez homered three times in three consecutive at bats, a three-run blast to left, a solo rip to right and another solo shot to right to carry the Cincinnati Reds to a 6-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Suarez drove in five of his team’s six runs, the third time in his career to drive in five runs.
With four home runs in the last two games and seven RBI, Suarez leads the Reds with 12 homers and 27 RBI, and his batting average finally has crept above .200.
Tucker Barnhart led off the third inning with a home run, Joey Votto walked and Suarez launched one deep into the night, a three-run crusher to give the Reds a 4-0 lead.
His second home run, leading off the sixth, gave the Reds a 5-2 lead. His third homer — the first three-homer game of his career — made it 6-2 in the eighth.
“That’s the first time I hit three home runs in my career and I’m so happy because ir was a big night for me,” he said. “I try to concentrate every time I go to the plate.
“Just see the ball and try to hit it hard,” he added. “They made some mistakes and I hit the ball really hard today. That’s what I want to do every time. I know if I hit the ball hard I can hit it out of the park.”
Yes, really hard…and three of them required the Pittsburgh pitchers to accept new baseballs from the umpire.
Suarez had three of the Reds six hits and the Pirates aided and abetted the Reds by stranding 11 runners and going 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position.
Suarez’s offensive outburst was needed because Reds pitchers were in the deep end of the pool all night.
Starter Anthony DeSclafani pitched four-plus innings and the Pirates had runners on base in every inning.
With the Reds on top, 4-0, Pittsburgh scored a run in the second that could have been much worse. The first two reached base on singles, but only one scored on Gregory Polanco’s sacrifice fly — a hard line drive chased down in the gap by Brian Goodwin.
Then the Reds turned a double play to end that rally with minimal damage.
The Pirates scored their second run in the fourth when No. 9 hitter Jacob Stallings hit a two-out home run.
DeSclafani walked the leadoff hitter in the fifth and he was removed for Michael Lorenzen. The Reds turned another double play to end the inning.
Lorenzen, though, filled the bases in the sixth with a single and a pair of walks. With two out, Amir Garrett came in and struck out Adam Frazier to leave three runners stranded.
Garrett put a plug in the base-runner nonsense in the seventh with a 1-2-3 inning, recording a pair of strikeouts.
Lucas Sims pitched a scoreless eighth and Archie Bradley finished the game with a perfect ninth on a night that belonged solely to the artificial blond bomber, Eugenio Suarez.
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