Cristopher Sánchez built his 2025 National League Cy Young runner-up season on more than his devastating changeup. The sinker — the only fastball in the Dominican left-hander’s three-pitch repertoire — was, by pitch value, one of the best offerings in Major League Baseball, grading out even better than the changeup, with both pitches ranking among the top 15 in the majors, MLB.com reported. A year later, that same sinker was hit with a severity that stood out even for a pitcher who still finished as one of the league’s most effective starters: opposing batters hit .331 (119-for-360) with a .483 slugging percentage against it in 2026, after Sánchez had held them to a .269 average and .342 slugging in 2025.
The 2026 sinker numbers land almost exactly where they did in 2024, Sánchez’s first All-Star season, when hitters batted .345 with a .481 slugging mark against the pitch. In other words, the regression erased a career-best year and returned the pitch to roughly its 2024 level. His changeup, meanwhile, remained as effective as ever in 2026, which is why the problem is specific to one pitch rather than a wholesale loss of stuff.
The 2025 vs. 2026 sinker stats, side by side
The underlying batted-ball data shows the damage was about contact quality, not just batting average, MLB.com reported:
| Sinker metric | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) | .321 | .366 |
| Average exit velocity | 92.0 mph | 92.6 mph |
| Hard-hit percentage | 50.5% | 53.5% |
| Barrel percentage | 6.6% | 9.4% |
| Whiff percentage | 14.5% | 11.9% |
Exit velocity barely moved, up 0.6 mph, but the quality of contact jumped: more hard-hit balls, nearly three extra percentage points of barrels, and fewer swings-and-misses.
Right-handed batters did most of the damage
Sánchez has always been tougher on left-handed hitters, holding them to a .502 career OPS compared with .702 against right-handers. His sinker actually got slightly better against lefties in 2026 — .193 average and .228 slugging, versus .200 and .244 in 2025. The collapse came against right-handed batters, whom Sánchez limited to a .294 average and .377 slugging in 2025 but who batted .394 (97-for-246) with a .602 slugging mark against the sinker in 2026, according to MLB.com.
The power surge showed up in home runs: Sánchez allowed 12 homers off the sinker in 2026 after just four in 2025. Of the 16 total home runs he allowed all season, 15 came off right-handed batters; the lone exception was Cubs first baseman Michael Busch, who hit a three-run homer in April 2026 at Wrigley Field, eldia.com.do reported. With only three pitches in his arsenal — sinker, changeup and a slider that graded out positively in 2026 — controlling right-handed hitters is the lever Sánchez has to pull to get back to 2025 form.
Location in the heart of the zone
One surprising detail: Sánchez actually threw more sinkers through the heart of the strike zone in 2025, his best season, than in 2026. In 2025, 38.6% of his sinkers landed more than a baseball’s width from the edges of the zone; in 2026 that fell to 34.4%, MLB.com reported. What changed was what hitters did with those middle-cut pitches. Batters hit .320 (65-for-203) with a .419 slugging against Sánchez’s heart-of-the-zone pitches in 2025, but .371 (73-for-197) with a .558 slugging in 2026.
Part of the 2025 success was likely deception — a hitter sitting on a changeup below the zone could be beaten by a 95 mph sinker right down the middle. To keep hitters from feasting in 2027, Sánchez will need to sharpen the location of the sinker rather than simply avoid the middle.
The sinker stopped finishing at-bats
Sánchez still generated elite whiff rates with his other two pitches — 46.0% on the changeup and 43.1% on the slider in 2026 — but his sinker’s whiff rate dropped from 14.5%, just above the league average of 13.9%, in 2025 to 11.9% in 2026. The bigger problem came with two strikes: his punchout rate on the sinker in two-strike counts fell from 23.1% to 18.3%, and batters’ average against the sinker in those counts jumped from .135 (14-for-104) to .239 (33-for-138), MLB.com reported. He doesn’t need the sinker to be a high-strikeout pitch, but when it can’t end at-bats, innings stretch out and hits accumulate.
Why it matters for 2027
Sánchez remains highly effective even without his best sinker — his changeup and slider carried him through 2026 — but an elite fastball is what has pushed him to All-Star and Cy Young-finalist levels in his career. The path back is concrete: re-establish the sinker against right-handed batters, who generated the .394 average, .602 slugging and 12 homers, improve two-strike execution with the pitch, and refine its location so middle-cut sinkers stop getting barrelled. The 2025 version of the pitch — .269 average, .342 slugging, .321 xwOBA — proves he has it in him; the 2026 season shows precisely where it slipped.
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