César Ramos stood last week in the right-field corner at Dodger Stadium and held his glove in front of his chest. The Phillies bullpen coach had set a target that Cristopher Sánchez could effortlessly hit from 60 feet. Sánchez threw a few more times to Ramos, who did not have to move his glove. Sánchez stepped backward while he played catch. He kept hitting Ramos’ target with a fastball.“I’m spoiled,” Ramos said. “I get to throw with him every single day.”Four minutes into their session, the formidable lefty was standing in center field. Sánchez was 180 feet from Ramos and he was long tossing, except he wasn’t. He was still mimicking the delivery he’d use on the mound. Ramos held his glove at his chest. Sánchez, even from that far away, did not miss by much. Only once did Ramos have to lunge to snare a throw.To explain the transcendence of Sánchez, the man who authored the longest scoreless streak by a left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball history, those around him point to everything that happens between outings. It looked so smooth during Sánchez’s 50 2/3-inning streak, which ended Wednesday night as the fifth-longest ever. He struck out 60 batters and walked six.He is precise. He is simple; he has three pitches, two of which he leans on most, and there are no tricks.Sánchez, 29, laughs whenever anyone suggests he makes it look easy. It is not. That is the point; Sánchez’s work on the days he does not pitch has evolved. It should look harder when no one is watching him. That is how one becomes consistent.“It’s something that, when you think about it, it’s taken my whole career to develop and to get to this point,” Sánchez said, through team interpreter Diego D’Aniello. “For my whole career, I’ve been looking for this. And now that I have it, and I think that I found it, I just have to work on maintaining it.”It’s the two visits a day to the trainer’s table for a minimum of 30 minutes per session. It’s lifting more and eating better, a process kick-started by his wife, Kaimary, who is a professional chef. It’s eight hours of sleep every night. (“It’s been something that I’ve taken really seriously lately,” he said.) It’s his bullpen sessions, adjusted to feature less volume and more intensity.It’s the hyper-focused catch he plays with Ramos.“Every single day — and I’m not exaggerating — we play catch and we’re playing targets,” Ramos said. “Every single day. I stick my glove out, put it on my chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. I move it around. That’s what we work on every single day.”The purpose“That’s why he’s getting better, he’s concentrating a lot more on catch play,” Zack Wheeler said of Cristopher Sánchez. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)Ramos is passionate about serving his catch partner; he first met Sánchez in 2021 when they were at Triple-A Lehigh Valley. Sánchez had a tenuous place in the organization, an enticing arm who had yet to string together any prolonged success. He walked 15 percent of the batters he faced in 2021. Ramos was the IronPigs’ pitching coach.Sánchez knew. He had to focus on command.“He took the next step of ownership,” Ramos said. “He was like, ‘Hey, you and me, let’s just play the target game.’ So, you know, we battle it out, back and forth.”Ramos, who pitched 267 games in the majors as a lefty reliever, seeks to match Sánchez’s concentration. He doesn’t want to skip a throw or make Sánchez bend over to grab a ball when they go to 150 feet or 180 feet for their catch. So Ramos is on his own throwing program, beginning in January with his sons (9 and 7 years old), then with a training sock when it’s more intense.