Christopher Sanchez overpowered the Athletics on Tuesday night, striking out 10 over eight innings as the Phillies rolled to a 9-1 win at Citizens Bank Park. He allowed three hits and one walk, and the game was effectively decided long before the final out.
The outing was the latest sign that Philadelphia’s rotation has turned sharply under interim manager Don Mattingly. Phillies starting pitchers have posted a 1.80 ERA over their last eight games, and the club is 7-1 in that stretch.
That is a stark change from April 24, when the Phillies fell to 9-19 in Atlanta and their pitchers carried a 5.08 ERA with a 3.86 fielding independent pitching mark. That gap between ERA and FIP was the largest in the modern era, a warning that the numbers underneath the losses were better than the record showed.
Sanchez was at the center of it again because the matchup fit his strengths. He threw his changeup 44 percent of the time against a lineup that featured seven right-handed hitters, generated 16 whiffs with the pitch and got nine of his 10 strikeouts on changeups. By the numbers, the pitch missed bats 70 percent of the time on those swings, and it gave the Athletics little chance to square him up.
The question now is not whether Sanchez can dominate a single game. It is whether this version of the Phillies pitching staff is the real one, after an early stretch that left the team among the worst in the league on defense and made every start feel like a test. For now, the results are stacking up, and the standings are starting to catch up.