Pinstripe Preview: CC Sabathia
CC
Sabathia is entering his final year of the nine-year, $202 million contract he
signed with the Yankees prior to the 2009 season. He will be 37-years-old in
July and his future is uncertain after the 2017 campaign. He has struggled in
recent years while battling injuries, resulting in multiple surgeries, and an
alcohol rehab stint in 2015. As I mentioned in a previous article about
Sabathia’s future in Major League Baseball (which
you can find here), he added a cutter to his arsenal in 2016 with the help
of Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera.
Sabathia
had a decent year in 2016; he started in 30 games and pitched 179.2 innings
resulting in a 9-12 win-loss record. His ERA of 3.91 is the lowest he’s had
since the 2012 season and his 152 strikeouts in 2016 were his most since 2013.
His win-loss record is definitely no indication of how he pitched, the Yankees
offense had its struggles for most of the season and Sabathia kept them in
plenty of games. His success came from his newly found cutter where he is able
to put more movement on the ball as he loses pitch velocity with age. He
clearly doesn’t have the endurance anymore to make it into the late innings but
he consistently gave the Yankees a solid five or six innings.
2017 Outlook
Going
into 2017, the Yankees are going to look for Sabathia to be as consistent as last
season. Based off of his age and recent injury history, I don’t think the
Yankees can really expect him to be much better than his 2016 numbers. That
being said, the Yankees’ biggest weakness going into the season is the lack of
starting pitchers so they will need all the consistency they can get.
Sabathia
does have two starts in Spring Training so far, one very solid outing and one
very bad. In the first game he had a line of 2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, and 2 K. He
got himself into and out of a bases loaded jam in the first and then struck out
two batters on very sharp looking sliders in the second. The second game he
pitched in was on March 12th against the Atlanta Braves and he didn’t even make
it out of the first inning. He had a final line of 0.2 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 1
BB, and 1 K in that game, however, the team played very bad defense behind him. It is only spring training but with the current state
of the rotation the Yankees can’t afford CC having many games like this one. As
long as he is healthy I expect Sabathia to have very similar season to last
year.
Article
by: Paul Alvaro
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