Curtis Mead crushes 3-run homer for Australia in the WBC as Phillies fans remember the trade that brought Cristopher Sanchez to Philadelphia
Curtis Mead stepped to the plate for Australia in the World Baseball Classic on Friday with two runners on, got down 0-2, fouled off three straight pitches, took a four-seamer way outside, and then absolutely crushed a changeup at 81.2 mph that dropped right over the middle of the zone.
Complete Schedule: 2026 World Baseball Classic
Pitcher Tomas Ondra dropped his head the instant it came off the barrel. He knew. The ball left at 106.8 mph exit velocity, traveled 388 feet, and landed in the stands for a three-run homer.
Curtis Mead Crushes a Go-Ahead 3-Run Home Run for Australia
Curtis Mead was a top-100 prospect, a former piece of the Rays’ system who came to the White Sox in the Adrian Hauser trade last year and is still only 25 years old.
The plate presence has always been his calling card. He has not developed into the pure power hitter some projected but at-bats like that one show exactly why he was always considered a professional hitter. The guy knows what he is doing up there.
In Philadelphia, watching Curtis Mead hit that homer in the WBC sent us back to a trade that did not make many headlines when it happened and has quietly become one of the most interesting swaps in recent Phillies history.
In fact, my guy Baruti wrote an article about it a few years back calling the trade “The Worst Phillies trade you never heard of” which randomly gets views, along with a ton of criticism given the fact that Mead was shipped to Tampa for a pitcher named Cristopher Sanchez.
Hindsight is 20/20. At the same, Baruti was right but things changed. Fast.
On November 20, 2019, then-Phillies GM Matt Klentak sent Curtis Mead to Tampa Bay in exchange for Cristopher Sanchez. Neither player was a top-30 prospect at the time. No headlines. No fanfare. Just two mid-tier international prospects changing organizations.
Curtis Mead had slashed .285/.351/.462 with 4 home runs and 19 RBI in 175 plate appearances for the Phillies and was a legitimate prospect, but the organization moved him.
Cristopher Sanchez came to Philadelphia and spent years trying to stick at the major league level. He was not a sure thing. He was not a headline. He was a left-hander grinding through the system and trying to figure out how to translate his stuff into results at the highest level.
Then 2025 happened.
Yes, there were a few years before 2025 that Cristopher Sanchez impressed, but last year solidified him as Ace No. 2 in the Phillies rotation.
Sanchez went 13-5 with a 2.50 ERA and 212 strikeouts over 202 innings. He finished second in NL Cy Young Award voting, behind Paul Skenes and ahead of essentially every other pitcher in the league.
He is now ranked the 19th-best player in baseball by ESPN heading into 2026, and ESPN’s Eric Karabell has made a bold prediction: Sanchez becomes the Phillies’ first 20-game winner since Roy Halladay in 2010, and only the second since Steve Carlton in 1982.
Think about that list for a second.
The Phillies have had Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Aaron Nola, and Zack Wheeler come through that rotation over the last fifteen years and none of them reached 20 wins after Halladay did it.
The combination of run support, bullpen performance, and win luck just never aligned. If Sanchez is going to get there he is going to need some help from the high-leverage late-inning guys and a little fortune on his side when it comes to decisions.
As for the trade itself, Curtis Mead is currently in the White Sox organization still trying to carve out a consistent role in the big leagues while Sanchez just came within a few votes of winning a Cy Young Award.
Klentak is long gone but the trade he made in November 2019 worked out about as well as a trade of two non-prospects can possibly work out for one side.
The Phillies got the right guy.
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Please stop with the positive Phillies propaganda, I don’t want hope. Frankly I want this team to fade into the dark abyss till all these bad long contracts are done and we can press the reset button. Till then I can’t bring myself giving the organization any of my hard-earned money. Tired of disappointment and again the Dodgers are way too good to lose so the season is chalked. If I’m lucky, we won’t have a ’27 season and beyond till the contracts expire.
P.S. happy Friday, hope the above post gives you a reason to down a few.