Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
Cristopher Sánchez of the Phillies just completed a scoreless month. It wasn't cheap, either. The Phillies' southpaw made five starts and worked 39 innings in the month of May. He struck out 45 and walked three. He only gave up 25 hits. That's a hefty workload with a 0.00 ERA, 0.72 WHIP and a 15.0 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He's been an utter assassin out there.
The scoreless innings streak goes back into April. He's now gone 44 ⅔ innings without allowing a run. This is the 11th-longest streak in baseball history. It's the longest streak since Zack Greinke went 45 ⅔ innings without giving up a run. Prior to Grienke, we'd have to go all the way back to 1988 when Orel Hershiser set the record at 59 scoreless innings.
On that note, thinking back to Hershiser's streak was a nice trip down memory lane. I remember watching SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight on a daily basis, and the streak got wall-to-wall coverage.
Sánchez is still 14 ⅓ innings away from the record and there's plenty of time, but my instinct here says that we haven't been giving him the level of love deserved for this ongoing feat.
Regular readers here know that I'm usually scolding someone or a group of people in the Soapbox. Consider this one directed at least partially at myself. I'm a big fan of accountability and I'm owning the situation here. I haven't been praising Sánchez enough.
What we're seeing is a historic run of dominance. He's one inning away from the longest scoreless inning streak in the Wild Card Era. Here's post-integration (1947-present):
1. Hershiser, 59 innings, 1988
2. Don Drysdale, 58 innings, 1968
3. Bob Gibson, 47 innings, 1968
4. Greinke, 45 ⅔ innings, 2015
5. Sal Maglie, 45 innings, 1950
6. Sánchez, 44 ⅔ innings, 2026
Now, note that there are two 1968 streaks on there. Remember, that season was dubbed "the year of the pitcher." It triggered MLB to lower the mound the following season and set in motion plans for the designated hitter. Teams averaged just 3.4 runs per game (the league average this season is 4.42).
Speaking of league averages, the MLB ERA for the month of May 2026 was 4.00 in 7,440 innings pitched. Sánchez threw 39 innings and didn't allow a single run -- so the league ERA without him was actually 4.03.
Overall, Sánchez leads the majors in ERA (1.47) and innings pitched. That's quite a combo, right? The best things a pitcher can do are not allow runs and to rack up the innings to help save the bullpen. He's dominating at both.
Sánchez next takes the mound for the Phillies on Wednesday at home against the light-hitting Padres. If he's got his usual good stuff, he'll creep closer to Hershiser and likely move into third on that list above.
This is truly one of the greatest runs we've seen from a pitcher in baseball in a long time. It should be getting more attention than it's getting. I apologize for my mistake in not hyping this up earlier.
