One of the best starting pitchers in baseball right now -- maybe the best -- doesn't even throw a four-seam fastball.
But that's how nasty Cristopher Sánchez is. He doesn't need one.
That's rarer than you might realize. Nearly every Major League starter has a four-seamer. Only a small handful, like Sánchez and Framber Valdez, rely on a sinker exclusively. Even as fastball usage has declined league-wide over the years, the straight heater remains baseball's No. 1 pitch.
But not for the Phillies' ace. Sánchez is sinker, changeup, slider … and that's it.
In this day and age, when pitch arsenals are getting bigger and bigger and a lot of star pitchers now throw multiple types of fastballs, Sánchez is pitching with one of the simplest arsenals in the league. And dominating.
You'll see it on full display on Saturday night when Sánchez takes the ball for the Phillies in a marquee matchup against fellow ace southpaw Chris Sale and the NL East-rival Braves (7:15 ET on FOX).
Sánchez's sinker, changeup and slider have accounted for 100% of the pitches he's thrown this season. That troika accounted for 100% of the pitches he threw last season, too, when he finished as the NL Cy Young runner-up.
Armed with only that sinker, changeup and slider, Sánchez has been either the most valuable pitcher in baseball since the start of the 2025 season, or the second-most valuable, depending on which version of Wins Above Replacement you prefer. Baseball Reference has him No. 1, and FanGraphs has him No. 2, behind only back-to-back Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal.
Sánchez is one of the top contenders for the 2026 NL Cy Young Award. But compare him to the other favorites like Paul Skenes and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Skenes throws seven different pitches. Yamamoto throws six.
Even someone like Sale, who's dominated for so long with primarily a two-pitch combo, fastball-slider, now mixes in a sinker and changeup, too. But Sánchez is steadfast in his three-pitch mix. That's as streamlined of a repertoire as any starter in the Majors this year or last year.
Starters with a 3-pitch arsenal in 2026
- Cristopher Sánchez (Phillies): Sinker, changeup, slider
- Kevin Gausman (Blue Jays): 4-seamer, splitter, slider
- Chase Burns (Reds): 4-seamer, slider, changeup
- Roki Sasaki (Dodgers): 4-seamer, splitter, slider
Starters with a 3-pitch arsenal in 2025
- Cristopher Sánchez (Phillies): Sinker, changeup, slider
- Trey Yesavage (Blue Jays): 4-seamer, splitter, slider
- Roki Sasaki (Dodgers): 4-seamer, splitter, sweeper
- Luis Gil (Yankees): 4-seamer, slider, changeup
- Sean Manaea (Mets): 4-seamer, sweeper, changeup
- Ben Brown (Cubs): 4-seamer, knuckle-curve, changeup
You might notice that Sánchez is the only three-pitch starter who throws a sinker, and not a four-seamer, as his only fastball. Well, you can do that when you throw an absolutely filthy turbo sinker that might be the best in the Majors. (It has been the best, according to Statcast's pitching run value stat, which measures the impact of every pitch a pitcher throws on run prevention.)
Starters with the most valuable sinkers since 2025
Regular + postseason combined
- Cristopher Sánchez (Phillies): +20 runs prevented
- Framber Valdez (Tigers): +18 runs prevented
- Sandy Alcantara (Marlins): +17 runs prevented
- Garrett Crochet (Red Sox): +13 runs prevented
- Clay Holmes (Mets): +12 runs prevented
It's not just his sinker, though. Sánchez's entire arsenal is nasty. The movement on all three of his pitches is ridiculous. That's what you need to thrive as a three-pitch starting pitcher.
That chart is looking at Sánchez's pitch movement vs. comparable MLB pitchers -- aka, other pitchers who throw those same pitches at similar velocities and with similar release points. Look at how much more movement Sánchez gets than his closest big league comps.
Sánchez's sinker generates an extra five inches of sink and an extra four inches of arm-side run. His changeup generates six inches of drop and an extra three inches of fade. His slider -- which he tweaked this season, switching to a spiked finger grip -- is now dropping almost four inches more than it was last season and an extra five inches compared to his slider-throwing peers.
The sinker -- you know, the one that's been the most valuable in baseball since the start of last season -- isn't even his best pitch. That would be Sánchez's changeup, which has been even more valuable. It rivals Skubal's changeup for the best in the game.
Starters with the most valuable changeups since 2025
Regular + postseason combined
- Tarik Skubal (Tigers): +29 runs prevented
- Cristopher Sánchez (Phillies): +22 runs prevented
- Michael Wacha (Royals): +21 runs prevented
- Blake Snell (Dodgers): +14 runs prevented
- Logan Webb (Giants) / Freddy Peralta (Mets): +11 runs prevented
As MLB.com's Paul Casella noted in a nice breakdown of Sánchez's rise to Cy Young level heading into 2026, Sánchez's sinker-changeup combo is MLB's most valuable two-pitch combo. Both his sinker and changeup are top-10 pitches overall since the start of last season, and Sánchez is the only guy with multiple pitches on that list.
Sánchez has struck out 226 batters combined on his sinker and changeup (and his 157 K's on his changeup alone are the most of any pitcher on any individual pitch type since the start of last season).
Now you add the revamped slider with more depth to those two elite-elite offerings, and Sánchez has all the weapons he needs to be a Cy Young pitcher. He can pound that sinker inside to lefties, with its combination of mid-to-upper 90s velocity and sharp movement -- that's how he dominated Shohei Ohtani in the postseason -- and then drop in a slider or sneak in a left-on-left changeup. And he can mix the sinker and changeup to righties, which both break more than the full width of the plate horizontally, but have nine mph of velo differential and a full foot of vertical movement differential.
It's only three pitches, but the truth is as simple as Sánchez's arsenal: This guy is a true ace.