Sanchez had the unfortunate scenario of being linked to Syndergaard throughout his minor league career and that was furthered when it was rumoured that the Mets said either guy, and AA chose Thor to be in the Dickey trade. Even with that the original narrative about Sanchez (around here anyway) was trade him while his value is still that of a top 30 prospect, as there were many that felt he'd return more in trade than he would provide here. Now his traditional stats were better than his advanced stats and it gave some of the Anti-Saber crowd some ammunition to fire back with and somehow Aaron became the bad guy out of this. I don't mind Sanchez being in the minors trying to become a starter, but that as a failed experiment, just hurts the big club in multiple ways (kills Sanchez's trade value, while a likely weaker reliever is getting IP's with the big club in a year where they should be competitive). Sanchez starting in the majors, while everyone ahead of him currently is healthy...just makes zero sense to me. So at this point, Sanchez in the pen is safer and probably smarter.