The streak is over. After 50 ⅔ scoreless innings — the longest run-suppression spurt in baseball for more than three decades — Cristopher Sánchez finally allowed a run on Wednesday, and even then it took a two-out RBI single from Jackson Merrill in the seventh inning to do it.
Merrill's line drive to left field scored Ty France, who had doubled down the line seconds earlier. That single broke Sánchez's streak dead in its tracks, ending a stretch that dated back to the first inning of an April 30 start against the San Francisco Giants. The Phillies won, 3-2.
The numbers are doing most of the announcement work here, which is usually how teams prefer it.
The numbers behind the run
Sánchez gave up four hits and one walk in seven innings against the Padres. He struck out eight. On the season, he has now logged at least seven innings in six different starts — an MLB-leading total that places him alongside some unlikely company in the record books.
If you count the Dead Ball Era (pre-1920), Sánchez's streak checks in at fifth all-time. Walter Johnson holds the top spot at 55 ⅔ innings for the 1913 Washington Senators. Jack Coombs goes third at 53 for the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics. Only those two, plus Orel Hershiser and Don Drysdale, sit ahead of Sánchez in the modern era.
Making history without opening
There is something almost stubborn about what Sánchez did in May. He threw at least seven innings in each of his five starts that month, holding every opponent scoreless, and walked away with the NL's Pitcher of the Month award. He joined Hershiser as the only non-opening starters in baseball history to accomplish that feat in a single calendar month.
He is 29 now, and last season he finished second in NL Cy Young voting behind Paul Skenes. The campaign before that featured 202 innings pitched, a 2.50 ERA, and 8.0 WAR — the latter leading all pitchers in the sport. Through 13 starts this season, Sánchez carries a 1.46 ERA and has already logged 86 ⅓ innings, both tops in MLB.
The contract situation alone is worth noting. When the Phillies signed him to a six-year, $107 million extension in March, the deal looked aggressive for a pitcher with one injury-shortened year on his resume. Now it reads like highway robbery.