© Kelley L Cox | 2020 Sep 24
Alex Dickerson is particularly excited by the Giants’ latest signing. Why? He knows what it’s like to be dominated by him.
“Aaron Sanchez, I still tell people back in 2016 that he was the best pitcher I faced, hands down,” Dickerson said of San Francisco’s new starting pitcher. “He’s been kind of out of the light for the last couple years, but he’s somebody that can show up any day of the week and he’s got elite level stuff.”
Dickerson, then on the Padres, was red hot when faced Sanchez and the Toronto Blue Jays in July of that year. Dickerson went 6-for-13 in the series with two home runs, but couldn’t touch Sanchez and his sinker.
“Oh yeah he was disgusting. I constantly look at that series as one of the best series of my life and the only “0 for” I had was against him. I look at the sinkers he was throwing me and what kind of stuff he has.”
Dickerson says it’s just par for the course when it comes to Farhan Zaidi’s ability to find diamonds in the rough.
“Any of these signings that we tend to make I always have a lot of faith in them because they’re really good players when you get down to it.”
The 28-year-old Sanchez is a former first-round pick who was a 2016 All-Star, when he went 15-2 with an AL-best 3.00 ERA with Toronto. Blister and finger issues limited him to 36 innings in 2017, and he hasn’t approached his ’16 peak since.
Sanchez struggled to a 4.89 ERA in 2018 and had a rough ’19 before getting traded to Houston, with whom he suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery and wiped out his 2020, too.
Listen to the full interview below.