Phillies takeaways: Sánchez struggles, García's change in setup, and some momentum?

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Instead, Cristopher Sánchez threw it down the heart of the plate and Michael Busch quickly crushed it 421 feet into the Wrigley Field bleachers for a three-run homer in Thursday’s third inning. “Overall, bad outing,” Sánchez said via interpreter Diego D’Aniello. “My only good pitch today was the changeup, and I missed too many spots with the sinker. … Tomorrow’s another day.” Tomorrow’s another day has been the refrain of seemingly everyone in the Phillies organization during a nightmarish losing streak that stretched to nine on Thursday with an 8-7 loss in 10 innings. The problems are everywhere. Sánchez probably does not rank high on the list. But the lefty who finished runner-up in National League Cy Young Award voting last season has looked slightly more human this year. He has allowed 35 hits across his last four starts, the most of any four-game stretch in his career. Twenty of those have come in his last two outings, both against the Chicago Cubs. Still, until Thursday, he was able to limit the damage. The number of earned runs he gave up against the Cubs (six) surpassed his season total entering the game (five). The sinker has been an issue so far. Sánchez did not locate it well Thursday, giving up multiple hits on misplaced pitches. Entering the start, opponents were hitting .328 against the pitch but with a .269 expected average — which is exactly what opponents batted off of it last year. The velocity is down just a bit, averaging 94.7 mph this season compared to 95.4 mph last season. In a time when the Phillies are looking for anything to go right, anyone’s difficult day will get much more attention than is warranted. There is little reason to hit the panic button about Sánchez. He is still effective, just slightly less sharp. The malaise is widespread in the Phillies’ lineup. Adolis García, the latest in a string of outfield bounce-back candidates, has certainly been part of it. He entered a planned off day on Thursday batting .200/.300/.257 with a .557 OPS in his last 10 games. Then he hit his first career pinch-hit home run in an important spot in the ninth to help send the game to extra innings. Still, it’s been a battle at the plate recently, so García and the Phillies hitting coaches tried something new early in the Cubs series. García returned to his batting setup from 2023, the year he hit 39 home runs and was named American League Championship Series MVP. It didn’t pan out. “He just couldn’t get comfortable with it,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “When you don’t feel good, I certainly understand that. It just didn’t come back to him.” Now, García is back to presetting his bat a bit lower, as he tried in spring training. The results have not materialized, but the metrics are encouraging. The Phillies faced a tall task in cutting García’s chase rate, but there has been significant improvement (29.8 percent in 2026 versus 35.8 percent in 2025). Yes, he’s chased more lately. Long sees that as him chasing hits and certain results amid a cold stretch. “But that’s our job to make sure that he stays in the zone and trusts himself,” Long said. The Phillies lost their ninth straight in seemingly heartbreaking fashion, scoring five runs in the late innings before falling in extras. But Kyle Schwarber said he did not find it as gut-wrenching as it looked. “I would say that’s how we play,” Schwarber said. “That’s the way we should go about our day, every single day. Where we give up some runs, whatever it was, and we were able to respond, keep fighting back.” The Phillies, entering Thursday’s game, played particularly poorly in any sort of “clutch” situation. They were hitting .231/.309/.278 with a .587 OPS in late and close situations, and .157/.286/.241 with a .527 OPS with two outs and runners in scoring position. They had scored 18 runs in innings seven through nine in their 24 previous games. They scored five against the Cubs in those innings on Thursday. Plus, they went 2-for-11 with RISP — a statistic that might not sound good, but is an improvement for this group. There were imperfect moments on Thursday, particularly a ninth inning in which the Phillies had two runners on with no outs and ended up not scoring. But there is good to build on, the Phillies feel. Said manager Rob Thomson: “It’s tough, but you feel good about the way they battled. … As the game went on, the at-bats got better and better.” The lineup played more like the Phillies of late 2025, undaunted by any deficit. Perhaps that’s the type of play they’re working toward. Or not. But, for the first time in nine games, the Phillies showed potential in late innings. There were signs of life. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms