Phillies shockingly won the Cristopher Sanchez trade

Phillies shockingly won the Cristopher Sanchez trade originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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It’s best not to jump to conclusions.

Because for years, it appeared the Philadelphia Phillies had lost their Cristopher Sanchez trade with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The deal, done in 2019, sent Curtis Mead to the Rays in exchange for the lefty Sanchez.

Mead was the guy from that deal who rocketed up prospect rankings. Sanchez, on the other hand, had his struggles in the minor leagues.

“Signed at 16 years old in 2013, Sánchez played just one game above High-A in six seasons in the Rays’ system before he was dealt to Philly,” MLB.com’s Brian Murphy wrote in an article revisiting some old deals on Wednesday. “Mead was a low-level prospect at the time of the swap as well, but by 2022, he was ranked among the top 10 prospects in Tampa Bay’s system and eventually reached as high as No. 2 in 2023. Sánchez, conversely, was never ranked among the Phillies’ top 20 prospects and struggled to a 5.63 ERA over 40 innings in ’22. It looked like this trade had a clear winner, and it wasn’t Philadelphia.”

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Mead ended up not panning out with the Rays, and he now plays for the Washington Nationals.

And Sanchez? He somehow blossomed into a Cy Young contender.

“For Sánchez, things started to change in 2023, when he finally got his walk issues under control,” Murphy writes. “He improved in 2024, improved in 2025 (when he was the runner-up for the Cy Young Award) and has kept right on raising the bar this year. His 1.82 ERA and 3.7 FanGraphs WAR rank second in the bigs. And no matter what happens from here, Sánchez’s 50 2/3 scoreless inning streak will be one of the top highlights of MLB in 2026.”

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This doesn’t even really feel like a situation in which the Rays can be blamed.

They identified Mead before he became a top prospect, and were right on him, to an extent. They also seemed to know that it would be tough sledding for Sanchez.

Somehow, though, the Phillies’ patience with the southpaw paid off in the end.

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