Phillies beat Rays to win 12th straight road game as Cristopher Sánchez stymies former team

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For three months, the Rays were the class of the American League, if not all of baseball. They won 13 straight games to begin the season. They outhomered everybody. They didn’t lose more than two in a row.

So, if the three games at Tropicana Field this week represented a measuring stick, well, a sweep — punctuated by a 3-1, 11-inning victory Thursday night — surely proves the Phillies measure up.

“Not a single guy in here needs a measuring stick,” said reliever Matt Strahm, who held the Rays scoreless despite the autorunner on second base in the 10th and 11th innings. “We know what we got. We know what we’re capable of.”

OK, fair enough. The Phillies are, after all, the defending National League champs. They rode another solid outing from emerging No. 5 starter Cristopher Sánchez, got back-to-back RBI singles in the 11th inning from Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner, and won their 12th consecutive road game, the second-longest streak in franchise history.

And after all that, the Phillies improved to 22-7 since their 25-32 nadir, a 29-game surge that rivals the Rays’ eye-popping 23-6 start and even the Braves’ preposterous 25-4 roll. Now, they’ll set their sights on the Marlins, who lead them by 2½ games with a three-game series in Miami starting Friday night.

“It feels like we can play with anybody,” Turner said. “I think we know we can do it. We dug ourselves a hole early on, and we were talking a lot that we know we can do it, we know we can do it. We’ve proven that. But we’ve got to win games to secure that postseason spot.”

Pitching has been carried the Phillies over the last month, and Sánchez is as much a part of it as anyone. Making his fourth start since getting a chance to fill the fifth-starter spot — and facing his former organization, no less — he delivered another stellar six-inning outing.

Since the Phillies recalled Sánchez from triple A, he has a 2.14 ERA, 17 strikeouts, and only two walks in 21 innings.

“He looks tough,” Turner said. “Throwing strikes, getting a lot of weird swings, which is always a good sign. The offspeed’s working great. I think I looked up and he had 58 pitches in the sixth inning. Just being efficient and getting early outs.”

So much has changed since the 2019-20 offseason, when the Rays couldn’t find a spot on their 40-man roster for Sánchez and dumped him off to the Phillies for infield prospect Curtis Mead.

Back then, Sánchez’s fastball reached 97-98 mph and occasionally scraped 100. But he couldn’t throw enough strikes to be effective. Internally, the Phillies debated over the last two years whether he had the stuff to be a starter. Maybe a bullpen role would fit better.

The Phillies were desperate for rotation depth, though. So, they turned him into a sinkerballer, getting him to trade velocity for better control. They also developed his change-up into a solid offspeed weapon.

Sánchez threw as many change-ups as ever against an entirely right-handed Rays lineup. Some of those hitters, including All-Star shortstop Wander Franco, played with Sánchez in the minors. He must’ve been unrecognizable to them.

Heck, Sánchez is barely recognizable to Phillies personnel that saw him pitch in triple A earlier in the season. He walked seven batters in one start and five in another. When the Phillies needed fifth-starter help, he wasn’t even an option.

But Sánchez threw a first-pitch strike to the first nine batters. He threw nearly 70% of his 75 pitches for strikes. He didn’t allow a hit until the third inning or a run until the fifth, and didn’t issue any walks at all.

“As a pitcher, yeah, I am different from the pitcher that I was a couple of years ago [with the Rays] because I think I’m more mature now,” Sánchez said through a team interpreter. “I have matured as a pitcher. When you have a little more experience, it helps.”

The bar is low for the Phillies’ No. 5 starter. Give them five innings and a chance to win a game, and, surely, they’ll be thrilled.

“Absolutely,” manager Rob Thomson said.

But Sánchez is doing more than that.

And the Phillies are stacking wins. Even against teams like the Rays.

With the go-ahead run on third base and two out in the eighth inning, Jose Alvarado won an 11-pitch duel with Franco to keep the game tied.

Alvarado mixed his signature high-90s sinker with cutters, while Franco fouled off six pitches, including five with two strikes. The at-bat ended with Franco lifting a fly ball to right field and spiking his helmet as he rounded first base.

But the most impressive relief work came from Strahm, who retired the side in the 10th to strand the automatic runner after the Phillies didn’t score. In the 11th, he got a double play to end the game.

In his fourth game back from thumb surgery and a stint in triple A, Darick Hall supplied the power the Phillies have missed.

Against a left-handed pitcher, too.

Hall snapped a scoreless stalemate in the fifth inning by bashing a first-pitch sweeper from Rays reliever Jake Diekman into the right-field bleachers. It marked his first homer in the majors since Aug. 16 of last season.

Thomson said Hall will play first base against righty starters, at least until Bryce Harper is ready to move to first. But the more Hall slugs, the more he will play. The Phillies will face lefties Saturday and Sunday in Miami.