A Filthy Dirty Sanchez, and It Was Beautiful

When a pitcher has every pitch working it can be a thing of beauty, which is what happened with Jonathan Sanchez last night. The way he is throwing makes his games must see because you never know what kind of special thing will be done.

Pitch Statistics
Pitch Type	Avg Speed	Max Speed	Avg H-Break	Avg V-Break	Count	Strikes / %	Swinging Strikes / %	Linear Weights	Time to Plate
FF (FourSeam Fastball)	90.04	92.5	5.69	11.92	60	47 / 78.33%	8 / 13.33%	-1.2094	0.420
CH (Changeup)	81.21	83.7	6.56	5.94	18	10 / 55.56%	4 / 22.22%	-0.1030	0.464
SL (Slider)	80.24	82	-4.83	-1.23	8	7 / 87.50%	1 / 12.50%	-0.9729	0.468
CU (Curveball)	79.20	80.9	-3.94	-3.99	4	3 / 75.00%	0 / 0.00%	-0.4859	0.477

Sanchez had everything working last night as he spun an excellent game. As you can see from the linear weight of all of his pitches everything he threw up there last night was causing fits. He mowed down the Dodgers and the Giants delivered a series victory that propelled them into first place.

You don't see many games with this kind of domination 12k against 0 walks. It all looked so effortless the same way the fast ball just explodes out his easy fluid pitching motion.

This season Jonathan Sanchez has shown many times where he has absolutely grown. The knock on Sanchez had always been that when things started to go sour he would lose focus and things would start to blow up. This season there have been numerous times, especially in the last few months where he has kept his cool and pitched through the times where the defense or his stuff has let him down.

To use an old cliché, he is leaving behind the label thrower and is growing into a pitcher.

Last night and for that matter 5 of his last 6 starts and the last he has but game scores of 79, 79, 75, 72, and 62. That is an impressive streak for someone who has been called inconsistent.

Since the All-Star Break Sanchez has been one the best Giants Starters, he is 4-2 (The team overall is 9-4 in his starts) with a 2.84 ERA a crazy K/9 of 10.35 and K/BB ratio of 2.625.

Sanchez is a special talent and when it comes together like this it is a sight to be seen and to think he is only the 3^rd best pitcher on this staff.