Last Night In Baseball: Cristopher Sánchez Just Had One Of The Best Months Ever

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: Phillies’ ace Cristopher Sánchez made five starts in the month of May, and he didn’t allow a single run in any of them. Those five starts all went at least seven innings, with two of them coming in at seven, another two at eight and one a complete-game shutout. He struck out 36 batters in his 32 innings while walking just three, and scattering 19 hits. He had an impressive 2.90 ERA at the end of April; it dropped to a league-leading 1.42 after seven shutout innings against the Padres on Wednesday in a Phillies’ win that clinched a sweep over San Diego. That’s all impressive enough on its own, but consider, too, that Sánchez’s scoreless streak is now 44 ⅔ innings, breaking the longstanding Phillies’ record set in 1911 by Hall of Fame hurler Grover Alexander. You can do the math of how long ago 1911 was and be suitably impressed, but consider that the oldest stadium in use in MLB, the Red Sox’ Fenway Park, wasn’t opened until 1912. Robin Roberts, Steve Carlton, Curt Schilling, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Zach Wheeler, none of them were able to break Alexander’s century-spanning mark. But Cristopher Sánchez did. It goes beyond “just” toppling Alexander’s mark, as well. Per MLB’s Sarah Langs, Sánchez is the second-ever pitcher to get through an entire month with at least five starts made without allowing a run, joining Orel Hershisher’s 1988. Sánchez also now has the seventh-longest streak of the live-ball era — Hershisher is first, at 59 innings — and he’ll make it into the top five with two more outs. Also per Langs, Sánchez is now tied for the third-longest streak of scoreless outings of at least seven innings since “at least” 1900, with five in a row, putting him behind only Hershisher again and 1968 Don Drysdale — both had six. Sánchez genuinely just had one of the greatest single months by a pitcher in MLB history, and it’s helped the Phillies rebound from a rough April. Philadelphia has gone 17-8 in May with a +28 run differential, with the team winning in four of Sánchez’s five starts. (The lone loss? A 1-0 defeat, when closer Jhoan Duran gave up the only run of the game in the ninth inning.) Philly is now 29-27, in second place in the NL East — they were 12-19 at the start of the month, and had been outscored by 45 runs on the season. Sánchez will eventually give up a run again, but for now, he’s helped bring balance back to a Phillies’ team that was toppling over. How can Dodgers’ hurler Shohei Ohtani stand out on a night when Cristopher Sánchez threatens history? By doing your usual Shohei Ohtani things, naturally. The two-way star for the start for Los Angeles on Wednesday, and after a scoreless first inning, hit a leadoff home run in the bottom of the frame. That’s just the third time ever that a starting pitcher has led off a game with a home run. You get one guess at who did it the other two times. Ohtani didn’t stop there, however. He didn’t allow a hit in that first inning… or for his entire start. The right-hander twirled six no-hit innings before exiting, but alas, he did allow a run, as he walked four batters and allowed a run on a force out. Still! Ohtani’s bat has recovered from his early slump, as he’s now hitting .269/.400/.482 with a 151 OPS+ despite those troubles, and his ERA for the season is 0.82 in 55 innings and nine starts. That’s not enough to qualify for the ERA title, but he’s very rarely deployed to chase that sort of thing, anyway. Plus, we got this lovely little moment where first baseman Freddie Freeman saved Ohtani from throwing the ball away on a pickoff. Look at Ohtani trying not to have a visible smile and mostly failing at it. The Dodgers would win, 4-1, and in conjunction with the Phillies handling the Padres, now have a 4.5 game cushion in the NL West. On Monday, Astros’ DH Yordan Alvarez hit a homer against the Astros. On Tuesday, Astros’ DH Yordan Alvarez hit two homers against the Rangers. On Wednesday, Astros’ DH Yordan Alvarez hit two homers against the Rangers. If you’re sensing a pattern here, well, maybe let the Rangers know about it, since they kept pitching to Alvarez for some reason. Alvarez has six homers against the Rangers this season now, after blasting five in this three-game series alone. He’s been excellent in his return after an injury-filled 2025, and is now batting .312/.422/.663: his batting average leads the AL, as do his 20 dingers, and he’s tops in the majors in slugging percentage, OPS (1.085), OPS+ (202) and total bases (134). Houston has had far too many problems for Alvarez’s dominance to keep them competitive, but May has been markedly better for the Astros than April was — Houston is 13-12 this month and has a chance to take three of four from Texas on Thursday, following an 8-18 April. There’s still a whole lot of 2026 left, so if Alvarez keeps mashing and the Astros can get healthier… well, the AL West hasn’t exactly been dominant. Houston is 25-32 and just three games out of first. The Rays have been thriving at the top of the AL East to this point, but all that was interrupted by the Orioles. Baltimore has now swept Tampa Bay, which has dropped four in a row. Sure, the Orioles are still 9.5 back right now, but that doesn’t make the Rays losing to Baltimore any easier to deal with if you’re pulling for Tampa Bay here. The thorn in the Rays’ side on Wednesday was Blaze Alexander, who played some third base and some left field for the O’s. Alexander went 3-for-4 with a run and six RBIs, the first two of which came in the first inning on a two-run single to put Baltimore up 5-0. In the fifth, Alexander would drive in another two, this time on a double that scored Coby Mayo and Leody Taveras. Alexander would strike one last time in the seventh to put the Orioles up 11-1, on a two-run homer that sent Colton Cowser home. That’s a pretty great day at the office for anyone, never mind a player who came into the game hitting .237/.293/.289 — yes, this homer was his first of the season, in his 47th game of the year. While Alexander did the most damage, he didn’t have the only highlight of the night. Orioles’ first baseman Pete Alonso picked up career hit No. 1,000 in this game, on a first-inning single. Alexander was still involved, though: Alonso was one of the runners he drove in later in the same inning. Blaze was inescapable in this one. The 10-game nightmare is over for Cubs’ fans, as Chicago finally won a game again. And with authority, too: the Cubs had 14 hits and scored 10 against the Pirates, while holding Pittsburgh to four runs. The game was relatively close for much of it, as both starters — Jameson Taillon for the Cubs and Bubba Chandler for the Pirates — went five innings and allowed four runs each. While Chicago’s bullpen held things together post-Taillon, the Pirates had no such luck. Left fielder Ian Happ drove in runs in the first inning against Chandler… …and then untied the game in the seventh while facing right-hander Yohan Ramírez. His 11th homer of the year made it 7-4, Cubs, and Chicago did not look back from there. Pinch-hitter Michael Conforto would hit a two-run homer in the same inning to make it 9-4, then first baseman Michael Busch — who led off the seventh by getting hit by a pitch — came to the plate again and got revenge in the form of an RBI single. Neither team would score again from this point, giving Chicago the 10-4 victory. On Thursday, the Cubs have a chance to go from a 10-game losing streak to splitting a four-game series: as they went from atop the NL Central to 4.5 back during this stretch, putting together even a short streak in the other direction would not be the worst outcome for them. What’s that? Another Munetaka Murakami update? Sorry, it can’t be helped, the White Sox rookie just keeps on mashing taters. And this one was especially impressive, a real showcase of Murakami’s prodigious power. Murakami took a 94 mph four-seam fastball low and away in the zone and drove it deep the other way to left-center field. He didn’t even look as if he swung all that hard at it, but those wrists did the work, and the result was a 432-foot blast that came off of his bat at 108.3 mph. Say what you will about the White Sox, but they seem to have fixed whatever issues with velocity Murakami was supposed to have, and now he’s tied for the AL lead in homers with 20, alongside Yordan Alvarez. And here’s Murakami’s first MLB steal, for good measure. A little awkward, but hey, he’s used to trotting past second. It’s like he was never gone. Gerrit Cole has now made two starts for the Yankees since returning from Tommy John surgery, and he looks a whole lot like Gerrit Cole already. In the first start, there was a little rust to shake off — Cole struck out just two batters and walked three — but he also allowed just two hits and no runs in six innings. On Wednesday against the Royals, Cole found those missing strikeouts, punching out 10 in 6 ⅔ frames without allowing a walk nor a run. This is welcome news for the Yankees on a smaller scale — Cole is one of the best pitchers in baseball and is already pitching like it, helping them to a 7-0 win against the Royals — but in the shadow of Max Fried’s IL stint for a bone bruise on his elbow, his return is helping the Yankees avoid missing one of their top arms. And at some point, the two might even be in the same rotation at the same time — no such luck on that one yet, but it’s still May and all. Don’t let all the offense distract you from the fact that Elly De La Cruz is an impressive defensive shortstop. Look at the range and extension on this play! De La Cruz isn’t a threat to win a Gold Glove, but he is one of those guys that can find a use for every inch of his 6-foot-6 frame when it comes to making defensive plays. A whole lot of shortstops wouldn’t have made this catch, in large part because a whole lot of shortstops aren’t roughly the height of your average NBA player. De La Cruz is, though, and it makes for some stunning highlights. So that was the good news for the Reds on Wednesday. The bad news is that they had to pitch to Juan Soto, who has been on one of late. Even Elly De La Cruz isn’t tall enough to get a glove on that one. Soto took a 79 mph curveball low and in and shot it 366 feet away by skying it way, way up to right. It’s home run No. 12 of the season for Soto, who has been absolutely crushing it over his last 12 games. His season OPS was in danger of falling under .800 around two weeks back, but since, he’s hit .386/.471/.932 with eight of his 12 homers, bringing his season line up to .301/.392/.594 with a .986 OPS, comfortably ahead of his career OPS of .950. The Mets would end up winning, 4-2, and while they are still in the NL East cellar, they need these wins against teams that are also going to be vying for wild-card spots. And also just wins in general — we can say “it’s still May” for a few more days, sure, but New York is also 23-33; there’s a lot of ground to make up over the rest of the season, and the Mets have to prove they can. If Soto keeps hitting like this, that task gets that much easier.