Opponents hit. Went with a 1. Won all four starts vs. Boston, going with a 1. Boston in a single season, joining Randy Johnson in in six starts Was unbeaten in eight starts following his second D.
Tossed a season-high 8. Oakland starts between 8. Made four postseason starts for the Yankees, going with a 2. Posted a 3. Was with a 0. Houston 6. Went with a 3. Had five scoreless starts plus another with 0ER , his most since recording five scoreless starts in each of his first three seasons as a Yankee Allowed 3ER-or-fewer in of starts…opponents hit.
Led the AL with a Earned his 20th career win vs. Seattle, vs. Oakland and Justin Verlander vs. Kansas City. In four May starts, went and led the AL min. Recorded a 2. Posted a 0. Was placed on the day D.
Sabathia primarily uses his fastball as a standard to work his other pitches off of. He attacks the zone with it, especially early in the count where since he throws it over 50 percent of the time as his first pitch.
By commanding his fastball to both sides of the plate, Sabathia, is able to get ahead in the count without giving batters a good enough pitch to drive for base hits. In , Sabathia introduced a sinker into his arsenal for the first time. The idea was to use this pitch similar to the fastball but by adding both an increased vertical and horizontal dynamic to the ball, more ground balls would be induced. While Sabathia used this pitch only times in all of , it has allowed him to get out of several jams by getting hitters to ground into double plays.
There could be several reasons for this but it is probably due to the nature of movement on the pitch. I have worked with a pitching coach throughout my own baseball career who played with Sabathia at the single A level with the Indians. According to my coach, Sabathia had hands so large he could palm the baseball to such an extent that you could no longer see the ball.
Exaggeration or not, Sabathia has extremely big hands. Using these large hands Sabathia is able to throw his changeup with the exact same arm-action as his fastball but have the ball come out at a slower velocity. This is a 3rd update of a piece written last November and re-posted late this April after his 3,th strikeout. His grandmother found his full name a mouthful so she dubbed him CC. Sabathia played three sports while at Vallejo High School.
Young CC, ultimately, chose baseball and was the 1st round pick 20th overall of the Cleveland Indians in After just three years in the minors, Sabathia broke camp with the Tribe in , at the age of Sabathia went with a 4.
The campaign represented the end of the mini-dynasty of the Cleveland Indians. The Tribe won the A. The rookie left-hander acquitted himself well in his first October start, winning Game 3 with 6 innings of 2-run ball.
For the next five years , the Indians missed the playoffs, while Sabathia grew as a starting pitcher. In this, his sixth season in the majors, Sabathia established career bests with a 3. In an era where complete games started to disappear, CC completed a ML-best 6 of his starts. In , Sabathia was the A. Cy Young Award winner, going with a 3. In Game 1 at Fenway Park, Sabathia was pounded for 8 runs in 4. Still, the Indians won the next three games and had a chance to clinch in Game 5 at Jacobs Field.
CC pitched better but still gave up 4 runs in 6. The Sox won After getting within one victory of the World Series in , the next season was a disappointment for the Cleveland Indians. On July 6th, with multiple players on the disabled list, the team was a woeful Sabathia had been decent but not up to his previous two seasons, posting a 3. General Manager Mark Shapiro decided to trade the free-agent-to-be, dealing Sabathia to the Milwaukee Brewers in a four-for-one trade that ultimately sent future star Michael Brantley to Cleveland.
In a new league and back in a pennant race, Sabathia was rejuvenated. CC made 17 starts with the Brewers, going with a 1. In those 17 starts, CC tossed 7 complete games with 3 shutouts. Despite the fact that he was about to become a free agent and had hundreds of millions of reasons to protect his left arm, CC took the hill on three days of rest in his final three starts, something unheard of in the modern game. This would not have been possible without the efforts of CC Sabathia.
The contract was by far the biggest ever inked by a pitcher in baseball history. The Bronx Bombers had missed the playoffs in for the first time since and needed an ace starting pitcher to replace the retiring Mike Mussina. CC Sabathia was worth every penny for the Yankees for his first four seasons in the Bronx, especially the first three. From , CC went He finished 3rd or 4th in the Cy Young voting each season. In , the Yankees won games and blitzed through the postseason to win the 27th World Series championship in franchise history.
As for Sabathia, years of October disappointments ended in Yankee pinstripes. After the season, CC exercised that option. From , CC Sabathia had been durable and consistently good.
He averaged 17 wins per season, innings pitched per season, while posting a 3. Using Wins Above Replacement, Sabathia had a In , Sabathia remained durable but struggled for the first time since his early years. With his fastball velocity dipping for the third year in a row, CC went with a 4. His WAR was exactly 0. CC only managed 8 starts in April and May with a 5.
He was diagnosed with a degenerative condition in the cartilage in his right knee. In July, he underwent season-ending surgery on that knee. Sabathia was mostly healthy in but remained ineffective, going with a 4. The Yankees in made the post-season for the first time in three years but CC was not on the playoff roster.
Instead, he checked into rehab for alcohol abuse. In 3 of the last 4 seasons, alcohol free and mostly healthy, CC Sabathia was an effective back-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. Even though he was no longer the top-flight ace he used to be, CC was, at least until this season, solid and helpful to his team.
In , Sabathia went These numbers clearly indicate that the big man still had something to offer as his career came to an end. At the end of , his age 31 season, CC Sabathia had a record with a 3. His career WAR was Through the age 31 seasons of every Hall of Fame pitcher, only 24 had a higher WAR by that point in their respective careers. Of course, the six years that followed involved three lost seasons and three respectable but not Cooperstown-caliber seasons.
He went with a 3. The N. Cy Young winner Jake Peavy went with a 2. By contrast, by my Cooperstown Cred methodology explained in this piece about Mike Mussina , another Cooperstown inductee , Halladay was a top 5 pitcher in six different campaigns. Justin Verlander has been top 5 five different times including this year. I have Johan Santana as the best pitcher in MLB for three years in a row with another top 5 the year after.
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