By Sarah Paley
The Phillies are moving back to a five-man rotation.
Michael Lorenzen goes to the bullpen and Cristopher Sanchez will start Tuesday.
Sanchez struck out a career-high 10 Braves over 7⅓ innings on Wednesday to solidify his spot in the rotation, but his remaining starts could be shorter.
“He might be a four- or five-inning guy depending on what happens because we’re really watching his innings still,” manager Rob Thomson said Saturday afternoon at Busch Stadium.
“It depends on how it looks. The way he looked the other day, it didn’t look like September to me for that kid. Velocity was good, command was great, the secondary pitches were great, so it doesn’t look like he’s slowing down. We’ll just have to watch him, that’s all.”
Sanchez has pitched 137 innings this season, 40 more than his prior career-high. For this first turn through the five-man rotation, Lorenzen will piggyback him. After that, the Phillies will reassess and Lorenzen could shift to a more traditional bullpen role similar to the one filled by Zach Eflin last September.
“With Lorenzen, if we have that piggyback game, it kind of resets your bullpen after that day. Hopefully, they give you the whole game or the bulk of the game so it resets your bullpen. We’ve been running with one less bullpen arm than the rest of teams for a while now. It might help us out there, too.”
