After coming to spring training with the Braves on a minor league contract there were little-to-no expectations for Sanchez this season. Yet here we are nearing mid August and Anibal finds himself as the third most valuable pitcher on staff by evaluation of fWAR (1.3).
Sanchez has been fantastic this season and he’s been doing it mostly by moving further away from his sinker and instead going to his newfound cutter. According to Fangraphs Anibal has gone from throwing his sinker 17.3% of the time in 2017 to 9.5% of the time in 2018 and has increased his cutter usage to 20.