Could Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez’s Woes Away From Home Have Playoff Implications?!

Great performance by Sanchez against a below average Nationals team. We are getting to the point in the season where we start strategizing about how we might roll out 1–2–3–4 in a playoff series. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter online saying Sanchez pitches better based on Home or Away and Day or Night. So I asked myself, does the data support moving Sanchez up or down in the pecking order if it means he gets a home start or nightime start? Or is this all a coincidence based on something else.

Bozzy Baseball Blogs here and I’m going to try and get to the bottom of this.

Sanchez Splits Home and Away & Day and Night are pretty drastic. Is there something to be said for pitching on a mound that you are familiar with and in front of a home crowd… 100%. Maybe he likes the food spread in the clubhouse. I don’t know. That said, Citizens Bank Park is notoriously known as a hitter friendly park. So what gives and how do we test this.

I am going to do a few things. First I am going to see if there is any other split data we can point to and notice anything more common. Let’s look at Sanchez’s Splits vsL and vsR hitters

We can see that Sanchez is more effective against lefties than righties. Is that our answer? Let’s dive into Sanchez’s Splits vsL and vsR hitters Home & Away. All things equal, his numbers vs lefties & righties should be similar whether at Home or Away… right…

Of course not, his splits Home & Away vsL and vsR reveals nothing of much substance. His Splits at Home vsL & vsR are both better than his splits Away. Is it really just as simple as he’s a better pitcher at home? I do not think it’s that cut and dry, we are not talking about pitching better at Oracle Park or New Cominsky. We are talking about the PHIGHTENS…we are talking about The Bank.

So this trail has gone cold for Bozzy Baseball Blogs. We did establish his pitches better against lefties than righties.

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Did he ever pitch against the same team twice? If faced the same team twice maybe one of those starts came at home and the other away. That would be a decent way to tell if there is anything to this Home and Away thing. Then again we have to consider seeing a pitcher a second time has its offensive advantages, so there could be some false positive results.

Pirates

The data says he pitched better at home. Worse the second time he faced the Pirates.

Nationals

The data says he pitched better at home. Better the more times he faced the Nationals.

DBacks

The data says he pitched better at home. Worse the second time he faced the DBacks.

Dodgers

The data says he pitched better away. Pitched pretty similarly both times he faced the Dodgers.

Reds

The data says he pitched better at home. Worse the second time he faced the Reds.

Rockies

The data says he pitched better at home. Worse the second time he faced the Rockies.

He tended to pitch worse the second time he faced a team. That said, excluding the Nationals, each of those second starts were also away. So it literally told us nothing concretely. But something to keep in mind later on in my recommendations/conclusion.

Yet again, the trail has gone cold here for Bozzy Baseball Blogs.

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Maybe he just faces better or worse ball clubs at home vs. away. So let’s break down the records for each start.

Well, statistically he is facing worse teams at home. Not sure there is a ton else to extrapolate from this, but it is a fact.

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Bozzy Baseball Blogs is about to go deeper in his bag than grandma searching for butterscotch. Let’s see if there is anything if we look at the teams he’s faced with a wRC+ >100 vs. wRC+ <100 vs LHP. If we can derive that he’s pitching better versus bad left handed hitting teams then it’s nothing out of the ordinary really.

He’s pretty dominant against bad left handed hitting teams at home, but not the same against bad left handed hitting teams away. There’s very little consistency here other than he pitches better at home. Trail is getting cold again Boz.

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Lets recap what we know :

• We did establish his pitches better against lefties than righties. Hit a dead end at his split vsL & vsR at Home & Away.
• He tended to pitch worse the second time he faced a team. Excluding the Nationals, all of those second starts were away. Tough to determine whether the stats are caused due familiarity or Home vs. Away. It could be a false positive.
• His splits away against bad LHH teams are still bad.

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I’m going to investigate one more stat before I end this blog. As you all may know I am big on pitch usage. I have been on the Phillies case about usage since before the All-Star Game. It clearly went nowhere in terms of them seeing it, but whatever. I believe it plays a role in terms of effectiveness. Let’s dive into it.

We are going to split Sanchez’s stats before and after 7/23/24, the date in which he surpassed his 100% pitch total from 2023.

It’s clear that his stats leading up to his 100% usage are better than post 100% usage. Let breakdown those stats into Home and Away and vsL and vsR

In terms of confidently saying he pitches better at home there is probably something there. What it is, not sure, but it’s clear he pitches better at home. I hope our John Foley can ask Cristopher Sanchez what drives this success at home. Is it the fans? food? women’s underwear?

Anyway, the last available data to check is velocity, I do not have spin rates to analze. If you look at the chart below is SL was the lower range of his velocity arsenal prior to his 20th start. Recently though, there is a lot of overlap on his Slider and his Changeup. His past 4 or 5 starts it’s hardly distingshable in terms of velo.

When Cristopher’s combined pitch velocity was highest, there was a pretty clear correlation to his lowest ERA. This peaked around 7/1 ish and has been trending in the wrong direction. Let’s take a look pitch by pitch.

His fastball velocity the past few starts has been climbing back up a bit. He hasn’t thrown above 96 since early-mid July. Also, I got this data from baseball savant/fangraphs. It’s the best use normals got.

His slider velocity is trending downward which is concerning. It’s a MLB level pitch and more effective than his sinker in terms of BA, SLG.

Changeup velocity is trending back up, which is fine as long as he can keep the seperation between this and his fastball. This is the pitch he has the most variation in term of mixing speeds.

I think when he’s at his best there’s a bit more variation in speed on the slider and change up. That way if he hangs his slider it acts more like a change up than just a flat change up.

Conclusion:

In all, the cumulative velocity of all his pitches are not trending great. There is some recent life to his fastball which is promising, but since he hit 100% usage he’s not been all there, and there appears to be a comfortability factor when it comes to pitching at home.

In my opinion it would be worth considering moving any/all regular season starts against playoff contenders to increase the element of surprise in the playoffs. Teams do tend to hit him better after seeing him once, whether it’s due to pitching away, I wouldn’t risk it. I would try to give him some rest, his arsenal is definitely most effective with increased velocity on all his pitches. I am not sure he is developed enough as a pitcher to know when to finesse or when to push it. I think he can get there, but right now a lot of that burden needs to be shifted onto JT. So giving him some rest to allow him the best chance to really throw at his best would be my best recommendation. I would strongly consider moving up his playoff start up to be at home. He has not proven to pitch well away from CBP, even when he was under his usage and facing bad teams.

-Bozzy Baseball Blogs