The Result Carries Weight
The length of silence matters when a pitcher has been this dominant. Philadelphias left-hander hadnt allowed a run since the first inning against the San Francisco Giants on April 30, and the streak finally ended at 50 ⅔ innings when Jackson Merrill poked a two-out RBI single to left field in the seventh inning Wednesday.
Merrill drove in Ty France, who had doubled down the left field line as the previous batter. The run was the only blemish on an otherwise masterful performance: four hits, one walk, eight strikeouts in seven innings. The Phillies won 3-2.
The numbers are doing most of the announcement work here, which is usually how teams prefer it.
"My vocabulary is probably not good enough for him, but he's just been amazing to watch," Phillies manager Don Mattingly said after the game.
The Moment That Swung It
Sánchez has now thrown at least seven innings in an MLB-leading six starts this season. That kind of consistency in a rotation makes the rest of the staff look easy by comparison.
The streak places him fifth all-time including the Dead Ball Era, behind only Walter Johnson (55 ⅔ innings for the Washington Senators in 1913), Jack Coombs (53 innings with the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics), Orel Hershiser and Don Drysdale.
In May, Sánchez became only the second non-opener in baseball history to start five games in a calendar month without allowing a run. He threw at least seven innings in each of those five starts and was named the NL's Pitcher of the Month.
The Race Tightens
At 29, Sánchez was last seasons NL Cy Young runner-up behind Paul Skenes. He threw 202 innings with a 2.50 ERA and led all pitchers with 8.0 WAR, per Baseball Reference's calculations.
His current numbers through 13 starts read like a misprint: a 1.46 ERA and an MLB-leading 86 ⅓ innings pitched. The Phillies acquired him from the Tampa Bay Rays in a 1-for-1 trade on Nov. 20, 2019, sending infielder Curtis Mead the other way. He made his MLB debut in June 2021, then signed a six-year, $107 million extension in March.
Given what that contract looks like now, the Rays have questions to answer.