Cristopher Sánchez pitches eight scoreless innings in Phillies’ 9-1 win vs. Athletics
Sánchez allowed just three hits — all singles — and struck out 10. Bryce Harper homered twice and Bryson Stott hit his third home run since May 1.
When Jesús Luzardo became the first Phillies pitcher to complete seven innings this season in his start last week against the Giants, he didn’t realize it until he walked back into the clubhouse and Zack Wheeler told him.
“Then we kind of chuckled about it, and said, ‘We got to pick it up,’” Luzardo said after.
On Tuesday night, Cristopher Sánchez did just that. The lefty ace’s longest outing this season before Tuesday was 6⅔ innings. He blew past that with eight shutout innings in the Phillies’ 9-1 victory to open the series against the Athletics.
Sánchez’s signature changeup was sharp as ever, with a 70% whiff rate. He capped the eighth inning by striking out Brent Rooker, his 10th of the night, on his 97th pitch. It was a changeup, of course.
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“That’s normal,” Sánchez said, through a team interpreter, about his changeup’s effectiveness. “We know the quality of it.”
While the final score was lopsided, courtesy of two homers from Bryce Harper and another from Bryson Stott, Sánchez pitched without much run support until the seventh.
Early on, the Phillies had a lot of traffic on the bases against A’s starter Luis Severino, but struggled to cash in. They stranded the bases loaded in the first inning, and had two runners on in both the second and fourth innings without scoring a run.
Harper took matters into his own hands in the third, leading off with his first homer of the game. He fell behind in the count 0-2 but battled back and deposited Severino’s sweeper into the right field seats to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead.
“We had guys out there all the time and weren’t able to push them through,” said interim manager Don Mattingly. “We had chances, but the guys stayed with it tonight, and we finally broke through.”
Meanwhile, Sánchez held the A’s to three hits — all singles — and one walk.
“He puts you in a bind, right?” Mattingly said. “Because he’s got the sinker on both sides of the plate. Changeup looks just like it. The slider comes in. So he puts you in a bind in the bottom [of the] zone. You’re trying to push him up. But when he’s getting ahead in the count like that, and throwing strikes, he’s forcing you to swing the bat. … They all seem to tunnel right out of the same spot. And that’s really when it gets tough.”
Lately, the Phillies’ starting pitchers in general seem to have rediscovered their identity. In 2025, their starters led baseball in innings pitched with 929⅔. But over their early-season slide this year, the staff often struggled to get out of the fifth or sixth inning.
In Mattingly’s first eight games as interim manager, Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, Jesús Luzardo, Aaron Nola, and Andrew Painter have combined for a 1.60 ERA.
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“We’re hard workers,” Sánchez said. “That’s what we do, and we like a challenge. Every time that we go out there, what we as a staff, what we like to do, is to go out and compete.”
Sánchez’s quick innings, in turn, helped the offense find its rhythm as they got things going in the seventh. Trea Turner, who was hitless in his first three at-bats, doubled to left field off A’s reliever Mark Leiter Jr., advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on a sacrifice fly from Adolis García.
They weren’t done there. J.T. Realmuto chased Leiter from the game with a two-RBI double. Then, Stott demolished a fastball to the second deck in right field to make it a 6-0 lead, his third homer since May 1.
“He’s an everyday player,” Harper said of Stott. “You have a guy that needs to play every day. And lefty, righty, don’t matter. He’s an everyday guy.”
The Phillies added three more runs in the eighth. Justin Crawford doubled and scored on a single from Turner, before Harper blasted a fastball 408 feet for a two-run homer to the shrubbery in center field. His second trot around the bases was slightly delayed as he initially thought A’s center fielder Zack Gelof had caught it.
“Just trying to keep it simple, stack my bats each day, and just try to go out there and hit strikes into the field and try to foul stuff off,” Harper said.
Jhoan Duran, who was activated off the injured list earlier on Tuesday, pitched the ninth with a larger lead than the closer is accustomed to. The Phillies righty had not appeared in a game since April 11. He allowed a leadoff single and three walks to force in a run, but struck out Brett Harris looking to end the game. His fastball topped out at 101.1 mph.
Mattingly described him as “rusty,” and said that Duran was tabbed to pitch no matter the score on Tuesday because he needed the work.
“He threw to hitters in his pen and things like that, guys standing in there, but it’s not quite the same,” Mattingly said. “So to get him out there in a game where you can let him go, it was good for us, good for him in that situation.”
Despite playing only two seasons for the Phillies, Aaron Rowand left his mark. Literally. Twenty years ago Monday, Rowand smashed into the center-field fence and broke bones in his face to make a catch. And if that didn’t instantly boost his popularity with the fan base, his answer four days later to a question about why he would sacrifice his body certainly did. Rowand joins Phillies Extra to reminisce about “The Catch,” his role in helping to change the culture around the Phillies, and a lot more. Watch here.
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