In the top of the seventh inning Wednesday night, with Cristopher Sánchez sitting at 81 pitches and his Philadelphia Phillies leading the Padres 1-0, San Diego's Jackson Merrill hit a single into the gap through left field, scoring Ty France and tying the game. This ended Sánchez's scoreless streak, which had lasted 50.2 shutout innings spread over more than a month. After the run scored, the Phillies fans in the stadium gave Sánchez a minute-long standing ovation. In a stunning display of the human element in the modern pitch-clock and ABS era, umpire Hunter Wendelstedt stepped out during the ovation and made sure home plate was clean.
While Sánchez had a good run at the longest scoreless streak of any pitcher in MLB history, he didn't quite get there. He will simply have to settle for having the longest-ever scoreless streak by a lefty pitcher, and surpassing Bob Gibson for the fifth-longest scoreless streak of all time, behind Jack Coombs (1910), Walter Johnson (1913), Don Drysdale (1968), and Orel Hershiser (1988). Sánchez is the only pitcher to break 50 consecutive shutout innings in the 21st century, never mind in the universal designated-hitter era; while Hershiser earned his 58 innings after the 1973 introduction of the DH, he played in the National League, which didn't adopt the DH until 22 years after he retired.
Sánchez's timing was also excellent. The streak started in late April and ended in early June, which meant that he was able to put together an absurdly clean May for the record books: your classic five-start, 39-inning, 0.00 ERA month. As Sánchez has now taught anyone not old enough to remember 1988, the primary absurdity of a 50-inning scoreless streak is the timescale. Starting pitchers only pitch every five days, if that, and without a totally limp offense in support, the maximum they can pitch in a game is nine innings. A 50-inning scoreless streak is weeks of tension. And even in that, Sánchez was efficient: His May stint included a 108-pitch complete game shutout of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
There is much that distinguishes Sánchez from his primary competition for the National League Cy Young award (apologies to Shohei Ohtani, who, despite his absurd 0.74 ERA, would have to settle for only winning MVP if the season were to end today), Jacob Misiorowski. The 24-year-old Milwaukee Brewer also delivered a stunning month of May, though unlike Sánchez, Misiorowski—the absolute schlub—allowed one run. Misiorowski is the modern Paul Skenes varietal of pitcher, a strikeout-heavy young gun with absolutely absurd velocity, who makes it easy to discern how he accomplishes what he accomplishes: He strikes out a lot of guys, even if he's not always the most efficient about it.
Sánchez is 29, and what one may call an old-school ground-ball pitcher. He has a minimalist three-pitch arsenal: a sinker that sits at 95 mph, paired with changeup that sits at about 87, both of which have absurd horizontal movement, and a slider to round it all out. He relentlessly peppers the bottom of the strike zone. That is not to say that he doesn't have swing-and-miss stuff or strike hitters out; his changeup is the most valuable pitch in baseball so far this year, generating whiffs nearly half the time and striking out batters 43.6 percent of the time. What it does mean is that Sánchez doesn't necessarily need to fear when batters make contact, even if they might hit it hard. It means that he is, again, efficient.
Last year, when Sánchez came second in Cy Young voting behind Skenes, he threw the third-most innings in MLB, breaking the 200-inning barrier. This year so far, Sánchez leads the majors in innings pitched with 86.1, four ahead of Miami's Sandy Alcantara. Sánchez threw more innings across five May starts than Misiorowski did across six, and Misiorowski put together perfectly acceptable, even long stints for a modern MLB pitcher: 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, 6.0, 7.0, 7.0. The count of seven-inning stints is especially impressive as Misiorowski only reached that number once last year. It's just that for Sánchez, seven innings is not something out of the ordinary.
My favorite part of Wednesday night's game—which the Phillies eventually won, 3-2—came just after Merrill's RBI and the standing ovation. While fans clapped on and on, Sánchez allowed himself a smile atop the mound. He readjusted his hat and stepped back on the rubber as the applause died down. Then he threw a changeup in the middle of the zone to Jase Bowen for a called strike one, and another changeup at the very bottom of the zone. Bowen flicked the second pitch up for a softly hit lineout to left field. And so Sánchez walked off the mound, nending the night with 84 pitches in 7.0 innings. Just another Cristopher Sánchez outing.
