Colorado Rockies: Brent Suter ready to leave vulture behind in Milwaukee

As he begins a new chapter with the Colorado Rockies, there is a nickname that relief pitcher Brent Suter hopes stays behind him from his days with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Colorado Rockies reliever Brent Suter talks about how he’s ready to put “The Vulture” in the background

It’s not that the nickname is all bad, mind you. The 33-year-old Suter still chuckles about how, during a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Milwaukee in late August, he became one of the memes of the 2022 MLB season.

Known as “The Raptor,” a nickname he has long held since minor league teammate Tim Dillard called him that after he ran by him during wind sprints. The nickname has stuck so much that Suter admitted that he likely plans to use the Jurassic Park theme whenever he comes into the game with the Rockies, just like he did during his time with the Brewers.

While “The Raptor” is great, its meme-worthy evil twin, “The Vulture” is not.

In that game against the Pirates, with the bullpen phone not working, Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell motioned to the bullpen that it was time for Suter. Well, with that motion, a meme was born.

When asked to imitate Counsell’s “call” to the bullpen, Suter obliged the media.

Suter laughed about the vulture image for a bit, but, now that time has passed and his address has changed to Denver, he’s ready to leave that as a Milwaukee memory.

“I think the resistance of it initially, Craig Counsell was nice enough to mention in an article that I didn’t want to be called that, but after that it was just full on blast,” Suter said. “I eventually had to embrace it or I would have been just dead by the time games came around with trying to fight people off.”

Suter embraced it enough that he wore a vulture shirt out to stretch and even had a vulture figurine hanging in his locker.

“It’s baseball, and sometimes you have to just wear it and embrace it and I did,” Suter smiled.

Both Counsell and Suter would eventually say that the motion was actually referring to the Tesla car that Suter drove but, whatever the case, the moment is one of the many that Suter cherishes from the seven seasons he spent in Milwaukee.

“There are some great moments. I think about 2018 [NLCS] when Woody [pitcher Brandon Woodruff] hit that home run off [Clayton] Kershaw. I was just in the dugout for that, but that was that was one of the cooler moments I’ve ever seen,” Suter said.

“We had some great wins but more than that, the great relationships with all the families, all the staffers there, all the coaches and teammates. It was all just amazing.”

Claimed off waivers by the Rockies, Suter is ready to start a new chapter in Colorado.

“I was hoping to stay one more year and just finish out the arbitration years with them, but I knew something was bound to happen,” Suter told me as part of a recent interview that you can read more of here. “When the GM (Matt Arnold) called me and said, ‘Hey, we put you on waivers this morning and you got claimed by the Rockies. Thanks for everything,’ then it really hit me that my time with the Brewers was over and I was starting a whole new chapter with the Rockies. I got really excited.”

As part of that excitement, don’t be surprised if Suter reminds Colorado manager Bud Black to always check the bullpen phone before calling for him to come into the game.