Though the Philadelphia Phillies ultimately fell 3-1 to the San Francisco Giants on Monday, it certainly wasn’t due to starting pitcher Cristopher Sanchez’s outing.
The southpaw continued his stellar first half with seven frames of one-run ball that included eight strikeouts and only one walk.
Following Sunday’s MLB All-Star Game roster reveals, Sanchez has been pegged by some as the most glaring omission from the National League squad. Of course, he could still make it as a replacement, but it should never have come to that.
Sanchez sports the fifth-best ERA (2.59) in the National League among qualified pitchers after Monday’s performance. His 116 strikeouts place him eighth, while his 107.2 innings are sixth. The Dominican left-hander has been one of the hottest pitchers in the league since the start of June, cruising to the tune of a 1.69 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and 46-7 K/BB across 48 innings.
Digging a little deeper, Sanchez ranks among the NL’s top 10 in K-BB ratio (19.7%). He is in the top 15 in both walk percentage (6.6%) and batting average against (.229). In other words, the 28-year-old hurler is, at the very least, a fringe NL Cy Young contender at this point.
Nothing left to prove
It’s not like Sanchez is just an unknown commodity either. If his 3.44 ERA over nearly 100 innings in 2023 fell just short of what most would label a breakout, then his stellar “prove it” campaign of 2024, in which he was named an All-Star for the first time, hit the mark.
Last year, Sanchez won 11 games for Philadelphia, fashioning an outstanding 3.32 ERA over 31 starts. He finished third on the club with 181.2 innings, trailing only workhorses Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. Sanchez struck out 153 — a number he is on track to fly by this season — and was the only Phillies’ pitcher with multiple (2) complete games.
Sanchez also got it done in the spotlight, as he logged five solid innings in the Phillies’ only win of a four-game, NLDS loss to the division rival New York Mets last year. In that playoff effort, Sanchez allowed just two runs on five hits and one walk, along with five strikeouts.
Having proved himself for more than two calendar years, even on the biggest stages, what more does Sanchez need to do to earn league-wide respect? The answer should be “nothing.”
