The re is a kind of dominance that announces itself quietly, and the n simply refuses to stop.
Christopher Sánchez spent May doing something that looks less like pitching and more like subtraction. The Phillies left-hander made five starts, logged 39 innings, struck out 45 batters and walked only three. Twenty-five hits. Zero runs. A 0.72 WHIP. Those are numbers that belong in a display case, not a box score.
The streak actually began in April. As of now, Sánchez has gone 44 2/3 innings with out permitting a run—the 11th-longest scoreless stretch in major league history. He is one inning away from the longest such streak in the Wild Card Era.
Rare air in baseball history
The list he now joins reads like a pitchers' hall of fame. Or el Hershiser holds the record at 59 innings from 1988. Don Drysdale had 58 in 1968. Bob Gibson logged 47 that same season, which triggered changes across the sport: the mound was lowered the following year, and plans for a designated hitter took shape. Teams scored just 3.4 runs per game that year—well below the 4.42 league average we see now.
Sánchez is still 14 1/3 innings behind Hershiser. Given how he has operated across seven weeks, that distance is not imaginary—but it is also not enormous. His next scheduled start comes Wednesday against the Padres at home.
He leads the majors in two categories that matter most
The broad strokes: Sánchez currently leads both ERA (1.47) and innings pitched across the entire sport. Those two numbers do not contradict each other. The y complement. A pitcher who can pile up innings while keeping runs off the board is doing two jobs at once—and saving a bullpen in the process.
For what it is worth, the league ERA in May sat at 4.00 across 7,440 innings pitched. Excluding Sánchez, that number ticks up to 4.03. One man, quietly doing the math for everybody else.