How Phillies lefty Cristopher Sánchez went from overlooked prospect to depth arm to Game 1 playoff starter in just a few years

PHILADELPHIA — Early in 2024, Cristopher Sánchez started talking to himself.

At the time, the Phillies’ left-hander was coming off a solid, though unspectacular, 2023 season as the team’s No. 5 starter. In the grand scheme of things, it was a landmark year for Sánchez. The lean southpaw had established himself as a legitimate big leaguer, going from an emergency arm to a Game 4 playoff starter. It was a monumental accomplishment for a player who signed out of the Dominican Republic as a teenager for $65,000.

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But Sánchez wanted to level up again.

So that winter, he started employing self-talk during his bullpens, treating his practice sessions with game-like intensity and occasionally referring to himself in the third person. He also embarked upon a throwing program to build velocity. He hit the weight room, putting real muscle onto his wiry frame. His sinking fastball, which averaged 92.1 mph in 2023, jumped into the 94 mph range. That added heat fostered more confidence and conviction, making him a more formidable pitcher.

“That was one of my goals during that offseason,” Sánchez explained via team interpreter Diego D’Aniello. “Not only to add velocity but also to work on my body, specifically my legs. Getting strong, staying strong and keeping my body as strong as possible was something that would help throughout the year.”

Sánchez, according to Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham, had always moved like someone who belongs in The Show. But the version of Sánchez who showed up to spring training in 2024 was a different animal: a frontline hurler who could shoulder 180 meaningful innings, make All-Star teams and win postseason games.

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That’s exactly what happened. Sánchez delivered 181 2/3 innings with a 3.32 ERA last year, earning his first All-Star nod. He finished 10th in NL Cy Young voting and tossed five quality frames vs. the Mets in Philadelphia’s only playoff win. He also secured his financial future by inking a four-year, $22 million extension. The contract, which now looks like a massive bargain, bought out all four of Sánchez’s arbitration years and gave the Phillies two below-market team options.

But only this past winter, once the dust settled on his breakout 2024, did Sánchez start to think of himself as that all-important, three-letter word: Ace.

“Last year was my first season as a [full-time MLB] starter,” he said. “After last year, then maybe I started thinking about it.”

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This season, “Sanchy” as teammates and coaches call him, has pushed himself into MLB’s upper echelon of starting pitchers. He ranks in the top 10 league-wide in most significant statistical categories, including ERA, innings pitched and strikeouts. He was such an egregious All-Star snub that his absence ballooned into national news. He struts to and from the bullpen before his starts with the moxie of, as one Phillie described it, “an MFer.” If not for Paul Skenes’ generational brilliance, Sánchez would have a legitimate Cy Young argument. He’ll have to settle for runner-up instead.

He has become, unequivocally, an ace.

‘I’m not sure l’ve ever seen the evolution of a pitcher like I have with Sánchez’

It’s a remarkable development story. Rarely does a player’s improvement occur so linearly. Sánchez entered professional baseball way back in 2013, when he signed with the Tampa Bay Rays as an international free agent. Like many long-limbed pitchers who need to grow into their bodies, he was a slow burn. It took him five seasons to reach a full-season minor-league affiliate. His fastball sat around 90 mph. Ahead of the 2019 season — when the Rays needed to add him to their 40-man roster or leave him unprotected in the Rule-5 draft — he was a complete nonfactor in the prospect world. That winter, there were 86 players mentioned on FanGraphs’ list of Rays prospects. Sánchez was not one of them.

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But in 2019, Tampa Bay’s renowned pitching development apparatus helped Sánchez lift his velocity by a few ticks. He threw 75 quality innings and upped his stock. Still, there was no room for him on Tampa Bay’s loaded roster, so in November, the Rays traded him to the Phillies for a teenage Australian infielder named Curtis Mead.

For a while, that swap looked like a catastrophe. Mead blossomed into a top-50 prospect, while Sánchez appeared to stall out at Triple-A Lehigh Valley. He debuted, unceremoniously, for the Phillies in 2021. The club, clearly viewing him as a role player, see-sawed him between Triple-A and the bigs. Sánchez went back and forth between Allentown and Philadelphia a whopping 12 times across ‘21 and ‘22. The Phillies, flush with starters, had no room in their rotation for an inconsistent development project.

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Then, in 2023, an opening appeared. Left-hander Bailey Falter struggled mightily as the team’s fifth starter and was demoted in May. The Phillies trudged forward with spot starters and bullpen games for a month until they handed Sánchez an opportunity in mid-June. He tossed four scoreless innings, allowing just one hit against the Athletics.

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He hasn’t been back to Lehigh Valley since.

“He’s definitely put on some physicality. Just putting on some mass really helped him,” Cotham explained. “And I think just tightening up his delivery. Over the last three, four years, there was a lot going on. There was a big step, a big rock back, his arms were going everywhere. Now it’s really compact. It’s direct to the plate, but it’s still his style, his rhythm.”

Sánchez’s style is quality over quantity. In an era when more pitchers are deepening their arsenals, Sánchez relies on just three offerings: a sinker, a changeup and a slider. The changeup, a dastardly, fall-off-the-table monster that ranks as one of MLB’s most effective pitches, is the real moneymaker. Meanwhile, Sánchez’s added athleticism and confidence have enabled him to pinpoint the heater to his glove side and under the hands of right-handed hitters more consistently. And the slider has become an impact pitch against all hitters; he can rip it away from a lefty and back-foot it to a righty.

It’s an effective approach and one that Sánchez has honed over the years as he has gotten stronger, smarter, better. Everyone around the Phillies commends him for his work ethic. Baseball people tend to appreciate gradual development more than they appreciate natural ability. Nearly every big leaguer works hard, but with time and focus, Sánchez has built himself into something. That garners respect.

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“I’m always astounded by him,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson recently told Taryn Hatcher of NBC Sports Philadelphia. “I always think about the first time I saw him, and it was trouble for him to throw a strike, to be honest. … He’s kind of evolved into this pitcher that has power and great poise and how tough he is. I’ve been around a long time, as we know, and I’m not sure l’ve ever seen the evolution of a pitcher like I have with Sánchez.”

‘Maybe I earned a little bit of their love and their respect over the years’

In July, through no fault of his own, Sánchez became a main character in a great baseball debate.

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Despite stellar first-half numbers, the 28-year-old was not named to the National League All-Star team. That remained the case even as replacements trickled in. Then, when Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski and his five career starts were added to the roster, all hell broke loose.

Upon learning the news after a game, multiple Phillies lambasted MLB for choosing Misiorowski over Sánchez. Even though Sánchez was slated to start the final game of the first half, thus rendering him unavailable for the midsummer showcase, his teammates were incensed that one of the best pitchers in baseball would be spending the week on vacation. To help quell the uproar, Phillies owner John Middleton paid Sánchez his $50,000 All-Star bonus anyway.

Sánchez was relatively unbothered by it all. He smiles when asked about it now. More than anything, he was touched by how passionately his teammates supported him.

“It makes me really proud that they did that, you know?” he said. “It showed me how much they cared for me and how much they valued me, not only as a player but as a person, too. I think that it showed that maybe I earned a little bit of their love and their respect over the years.”

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Instead of traveling to Atlanta, Sánchez stayed in sunny San Diego (where the Phils finished the first half) for a few days with his family before flying home to Philadelphia. It was relaxing, rejuvenating. Cristopher and his wife, Kaimary, welcomed their first child, Cristopher Jr., last autumn. A picture of the 11-month-old’s toothless smile is Sánchez’s phone background. He beams like a floodlight when asked anything about his son.

That time spent, he implied, was better than a few days at the All-Star Game.

For the Phillies, Sánchez’s ascension couldn’t have come at a better time. Zack Wheeler, arguably the sport’s best pitcher of the past half-decade, went down on Aug. 16 due to a blood clot in his shoulder that turned out to be a thoracic outlet issue. He is done for the season. The club’s entire offensive core — Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, JT Realmuto — is on the wrong side of 30. Schwarber and Realmuto will hit free agency this winter. The time, for these Phillies, is very much now.

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That’s why losing Wheeler, who was crafting a Cy Young campaign of his own, was such a crushing blow. But since his final outing, the Phillies are a league-best 20-9. Over that span, they have turned a five-game division lead into a resounding NL East title, solidifying themselves as World Series front-runners. There is a contagious optimism emerging in south Philadelphia, and Sánchez is a huge reason behind it.

Barring an improbable late-September collapse, the lanky lefty will climb the Citizens Bank Park mound on Oct. 4 for Game 1 of the NLDS. He will become just the fifth Phillies pitcher this century to start a postseason opener, joining Wheeler, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay.

For all he is and has become, Sánchez has only two career postseason appearances to his name: a total clunker in the 2023 NLCS against the Arizona Diamondbacks and that solid, five-inning showing in last year’s wacky NLDS Game 2. But despite his relative lack of experience, Sánchez is quite familiar with high-stress pitching. Earlier in his career, he was a reliever for his boyhood club, Toros del Este, in the Dominican Winter League, and he won a championship with the team in 2020. By comparison, he says, playing for Philadelphia’s demanding fans is easy.

“It’s all your friends and family down there,” he said. “And the fans speak your same language, so you hear all kinds of crazy stuff.”

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Whether those adventures help Sánchez maintain his composure in October remains to be seen. But he’s as prepared and as driven as anybody could be. In some ways, he’s playing with house money. His journey — from minor-league afterthought to a depth arm overly familiar with Interstate 476 to one of baseball’s best — is already a success. And while he’s hungry, ravenous for more, Sánchez has already achieved more than anybody could have imagined.

Except, of course, for himself.