Sanchez Is Finished, And The Tigers Must Move On
By Will Burchfield
Twitter: Burchie_kid
Here's the unsettling truth the Tigers need to accept: Anibal Sanchez is finished. He's done.
And the sooner they acknowledge that, the better.
In what surprised no one yesterday, Sanchez was battered around the ballpark in Toronto. He surrendered five runs on eight hits in four innings, which is very much the norm for him these days. The big blow was delivered by Josh Donaldson, who launched a three-run bomb in the fourth inning on a fastball that belongs in tonight's home run derby.
It was frustrating for Tigers' fans to watch, but hardly a surprise. There is no questioning what Sanchez is capable of anymore, no grasping at the straws of his erstwhile ability. He doesn't throw as hard as he used to and his pitches don't break like they once did, and the Tigers are paying for it dearly.
In games Sanchez has started this season, they are 3-11. In his last five starts, in which Sanchez has a 10.08 ERA and 2.02 WHIP – yeesh, which number is worse? – they are 0-5. They have not won a Sanchez-started game since April 28. And yet there he was on Sunday afternoon, taking the mound in the bottom of the first against one of the most potent lineups in baseball.
Five runs in four innings felt like a minor miracle.
Sure, Brad Ausmus and the Tigers have had their hands tied by a string of recent injuries to starting pitchers. Both Jordan Zimmermann and Daniel Norris ended up on the 15-day D.L. last week, forcing the team into a sudden predicament. But they made a bad situation worse by turning to Sanchez.
It's time for the Tigers to read the writing on the wall. And if that's not clear enough, then consider the stats.
In 2013, when Sanchez led the American League in ERA, he relied on a fastball-slider-changeup combination that was among the best in baseball. This arsenal was built on his fastball, whose velocity averaged 94.2 miles per hour. That year, opposing batters hit .224 against his fastball, .202 against his changeup and a miniscule .162 against his slider.
Fast forward to 2016, and Sanchez is a skeleton of his former self. He's still the same pitcher by design, only the design is flawed. His ineffectiveness begins with the deterioration of his fastball, which now averages just 91.8 mph on the radar gun and is being tagged at a .314 clip. That, in turn, has undone the deception of his off-speed pitches: batters are hitting .313 against his changeup and .296 against his slider.
It's stunning the Tigers have extended Sanchez such a long leash. In the 14 starts he has made this season, only one has met baseball's definition of "quality" – at least six innings pitched, at most three runs allowed. At one point, there was hope that he might turn things around, belief that a breakthrough was on the horizon. But that optimism has vanished.
Handing Sanchez the ball has become an undeniable act of self-sabotage.
The team's attachment to him, of course, can be explained by his contract. The Tigers are paying Sanchez $16 million per year through the 2018 season, an investment they would hate to think is already beginning to backfire. Desperate to extract some value from the deal (while also justifying it), they have turned to Sanchez, again and again, against their better judgment.
At this point, the Tigers simply need to cut their losses. Sanchez isn't fit for the big leagues anymore, whether or not his contract suggests he is. And though his numbers have looked better out of the bullpen, his arm hasn't. His 2.83 ERA as a reliever is a product of pitching mop-up innings against disinterested hitters.
Time has run out on Sanchez. Once pitchers lose their velocity, they don't miraculously recover it. There is no way this goes from here but south, and it is up to the Tigers to decide how long that freefall lasts.
If the Tigers are truly in win-now mode, as all of their recent transactions would suggest, they cannot justify keeping Sanchez around. By doing so, they are merely obstructing the addition of someone else – someone like, say, Joe Jimenez. Is time they release the beleaguered righty and swallow the sting of a failed investment.
He is dead weight on a roster that can't afford wasted space, a drag on a team that needs every edge it can find to make a second-half push. The Fat Lady has sung on Sanchez' career, and she's no longer singing his praises.
