TORONTO – Aaron Sanchez doesn’t allow many home runs.
His fastball sinks as it nears the plate, preventing opposing hitters from making much hard contact. In scouting terms, it’s a heavy ball with 70 movement. In practical terms, it means lots of ground balls and only the occasional home run.
Look at last year, for example. Just 15 of the 790 hitters who faced Sanchez homered, and he allowed fewer home runs per nine innings than any American League pitcher.
Yet there’s one player who appears to have no trouble whatsoever taking Sanchez deep. Chris Davis homered against Sanchez the first time he faced him, in August of 2014. The next time he faced him, he homered again. Sanchez kept Davis in the park the next three games he started against the Orioles, only to allow a third Davis home run last June.
And now this: in Baltimore’s 6-4 win over the Blue Jays Friday, Davis doubled against Sanchez in the second, walked in the fourth, then hit a 417-foot blast over the centre field wall in the sixth. That home run, the fourth of his career against Sanchez in only 28 plate appearances, gives him a .444/.643/1.222 batting line against a pitcher who has otherwise dominated the opposition at the MLB level.
By now Sanchez knows that Davis has hit him well, but he’s no closer than anyone else to explaining why.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m about to call him up and ask him. This dude’s got really good numbers off of me, I don’t know if he sees me different than he sees other people. I don’t know if it’s that I get predictable in counts.”
“He’s just one of those guys that has stupid numbers off of me.”
The only one, really. Sanchez has allowed just 28 home runs at the MLB level: four to Davis and 24 to the rest of the league. The one other hitter with as many as two homers against Sanchez is Astros catcher Brian McCann.
Sanchez allowed two other home runs Friday, one to J.J. Hardy and one to Jonathan Schoop. It was only the second time in his career that he allowed as many as three home runs in one start.
“These guys know him well,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “And he made a few mistakes.”
Even for Davis, who has 244 career home runs, it’s unusual to hit any one pitcher so hard. He debuted in 2008 two years before Sanchez was even drafted, and yet he has yet to hit more than four homers against an opposing pitcher.
Sanchez will be looking to keep it that way the next time he faces the Orioles.
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