PITTSBURGH -- Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez was dealing late Saturday afternoon at PNC Park and limited the Pirates to six hits in a 6-0 victory.
By completing his first game of the season, Sánchez’s scoreless streak stands at 29 2/3 innings, the longest active scoreless streak in Major League Baseball. He was tough from the start, retiring the first 11 hitters he faced before Bryan Reynolds doubled over the head of center fielder Justin Crawford in the fourth. Only five more Pirates reached after that, and only one got to third base.
“I felt really good today. I felt normal with my routine,” Sánchez said through interpreter Diego D'Aniello. “I always have my routine as well as the game plan that I did with [catcher] J.T. Realmuto and [pitching coach] Caleb [Cotham].”
For Sánchez, it felt like a home game because there were a lot of Phillies fans in attendance. Every inning he walked in and out of the dugout, the fans stood up cheering for him.
“I’m proud of myself, but at the same time, I try to keep my feet on the ground, keep it going, keep getting better, keep working. The same,” Sánchez said.
Here’s how efficient Sánchez was: He threw 108 pitches without allowing a walk and struck out a career-high 13 batters. He confused the Pirates with his sinker, changeup and slider. The sinker was clocked at a max of 97.6 mph.
"He mixes it up. Sinker was elite today,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said about Sánchez. “The slider and changeup, he could throw for strikes. He could throw beneath the zone. Everything comes out and looks the same. He really kept us off-balance, and we couldn't get much going there."
Phillies bench coach Dusty Wathan, filling in for manager Don Mattingly who attended his son’s college graduation at Purdue University, spoke to Sánchez after the eighth inning to find out if Sánchez was strong enough to pitch the ninth. There wasn’t any hesitation from the left-hander. The answer was yes. Just in case, however, the Phillies had left-hander Tanner Banks warming up in the ‘pen.
Sánchez had a couple of hiccups during that final inning. With one out, Konnor Griffin and Reynolds had consecutive singles to put runners on first and third. But Marcell Ozuna struck out. Nick Yorke was the next hitter and Wathan made up his mind that Yorke was Sánchez’s last hitter. No need to worry. Yorke grounded out to end the game.
“At that point, I was over 100 pitches. I knew [Yorke] could be my last hitter,” Sánchez said. “I’m really excited about my first complete game of the season today. My mentality is to keep competing, keep going and giving the best of myself. It’s not about two or three starts. It’s lots of consistency. You want to keep going.”
Sánchez was given run support starting in the first inning, when Bryce Harper swung at a 3-1 fastball from Pirates right-hander Bubba Chandler and hit a three-run dinger a Statcast-projected 457 feet into the batter’s eye, located over the center-field wall.
Philadelphia added two more runs off Chandler an inning later. Realmuto scored on a double by Kyle Schwarber. On the same play, Trea Turner scored on a throwing error by right fielder Jared Triolo.
In the eighth with right-hander Justin Lawrence on the mound, Justin Crawford scored the last run of the game on a Trea Turner double. Crawford then preserved the shutout with a spectacular sliding catch to end the bottom of the eighth.
“We did a good job of tacking on runs,” Wathan said. “Schwarbs had a double there and we scored a couple of more runs. It’s always nice to have those add on. As the [Pirates] know from yesterday [in the 11-9 victory], you never have enough runs. You always want a few more.”
The Phillies are back at the .500 mark (23-23) for the first time since April 11, when they were 7-7. It seems like yesterday when Mattingly took over a 9-19 club on April 16. Since that day, the Phillies are 14-4.
“That’s the team we are,” Harper said. “Basically, we didn’t have a great month of April. So, we try to put that behind us as quickly as possible. [It’s about winning] series and months. Hopefully, we’ll be where we want to be in the end.”