{"id":673973,"date":"2026-03-22T15:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T15:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/673973\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T15:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T15:00:11","slug":"phillies-extend-cristopher-sanchez-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/673973\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Extend Cristopher Sanchez – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Phillies have announced a contract extension for left-hander Cristopher Sanchez<\/a><\/strong>, as first reported by Robert Murray of FanSided<\/a>. It\u2019s a six-year deal that runs from 2027 through 2032 and includes a club option for the 2033 season. The Athletic\u2019s Matt Gelb<\/a> reports that the deal guarantees Sanchez $107MM, including the $3.5MM salary the southpaw is set to make in 2026. Francys Romero of Beisbol FR<\/a> reports that the deal also includes \u201cmore than $13MM\u201d in performance incentives. Sanchez is represented by Mato Sports Management.<\/p>\n

The news is a shocking development given that Sanchez is entering just the second season of his four-year, $23.5MM extension with the Phillies. That deal had two affordable club options attached to the end of it, so the lefty was set to make just $47MM over the next five seasons. That makes this contract effectively $60MM in new money for the lefty\u2019s age-34 and -35 seasons, with a club option for his age-36 campaign at a value that has not yet been reported.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a nearly unprecedented move by the Phillies, whose initial extension with Sanchez had made him one of the most valuable assets in the entire sport. They\u2019ve now traded the most, if not all of that surplus value to lock up the left-hander into his mid-thirties. Other teams have given established, franchise players extensions that take them well past their primes after already having those prime years locked up in the past, including the Guardians<\/a> with Jose Ramirez<\/a><\/strong> back in January and the\u00a0Diamondbacks<\/a> with Ketel Marte<\/a><\/strong> last year. Those deals weren\u2019t quite the same as this one, however. Both Ramirez and Marte had more than a decade of MLB experience under their belt and had already played out significant portions of their initial team-friendly extensions, even signing with the club multiple times. In addition, those teams had the motive of restructuring their star\u2019s previous deal to include deferred money.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Sanchez is undeserving of his new payday, of course. After breaking out in 2024 and earning a trip to the All-Star game, Sanchez enjoyed one of the most impressive pitching seasons in recent memory this past season. The lefty spun a 2.50 ERA with a 2.55 FIP in 202 innings of work, striking out 212 batters across 32 starts. He paired his 26.3% strikeout rate with a 5.5% walk rate and a 58.3% ground ball rate, giving him a lower SIERA than every qualified starter in the NL and the third-lowest in baseball behind Tarik Skubal<\/a><\/strong> and Garrett Crochet<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By measure of fWAR, Sanchez\u2019s 2025 season was a top-20 campaign by a qualified starter since 2015, tied with Cy Young-winning campaigns by future Hall of Famers like Chris Sale<\/a><\/strong> (2024), Max Scherzer<\/a><\/strong> (2017), and Justin Verlander<\/a><\/strong> (2019). Sanchez ultimately finished second behind Paul Skenes<\/a><\/strong> in Cy Young voting last year, but nonetheless established himself as among the upper-echelon of starters in today\u2019s game with that performance. Clearly, the Phillies are betting on Sanchez to age well like those other elite arms did by signing him to a big-money extension for his mid-thirties. Philadelphia has been unafraid of signing players well past their prime years previously, as shown by the fact that Zack Wheeler<\/a><\/strong> and Aaron Nola<\/a><\/strong> are under contract through their age-37 seasons, while Jesus Luzardo<\/a><\/strong>\u2018s new contract extension includes a club option for his age-34 campaign.<\/p>\n

With this new contract, Sanchez joins Luzardo\u00a0 (2032 club option) and Trea Turner<\/a><\/strong> (contract guaranteed through 2033) as the only three players under team control beyond the expiration of Bryce Harper<\/a><\/strong>\u2018s contract in 2031. This restructured contract for Sanchez could be an interesting data point for Harper and agent Scott Boras, as the two-time MVP and future Hall of Famer has previously publicly expressed a desire<\/a> to extend or restructure his contract with Philadelphia to keep him in town beyond the 2031 campaign. Of course, those previous attempts were before this past offseason\u2019s comments<\/a> from Dave Dombrowski critical of Harper that drew the superstar\u2019s ire, prompting trade speculation that Dombrowski later firmly shut down. Even if those tensions have been smoothed over at this point, it\u2019s entirely possible that the Phillies would simply value adding a few more years to Sanchez\u2019s contract more than doing the same with Harper, who will already be 38 years old in the final year of his current deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Phillies have announced a contract extension for left-hander Cristopher Sanchez, as first reported by Robert Murray of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":673974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[149325,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-673973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cristopher-sanchez","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116273428874112709","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}