It has now been four years since CC Sabathia was last an above-average starter for the Yankees. He pitched to a 3.38 ERA (3.34 FIP) in exactly 200 innings in 2012 — he did that despite a bone spur in his elbow — and that fall he more or less carried the Yankees to the ALDS win over the Orioles. Sabathia allowed three runs and recorded 53 of 54 possible outs in his two ALDS starts. He was dominant.
Since then, injuries and general wear and tear have reduced Sabathia to near replacement level performance. He’s authored a 4.81 ERA (4.40 FIP) in 424.1 innings over the last three seasons, including a 4.73 ERA (4.68 FIP) in a team-leading 167.1 innings last year. Righties absolutely hammered him (.303/.352/.500 and a .370 wOBA) and his days of chewing up innings are long gone. Sabathia averaged only 5.77 innings per start in 2015.
The 2016 season is the final guaranteed season on Sabathia’s contract — he does have an option for 2017 that will vest as long as his shoulder stays healthy — and the Yankees have shown they will keep him in the rotation for better or worse. Sending Adam Warren to the bullpen last year when he had the lowest ERA on the staff tells us all we need to know about Sabathia’s standing. He’s owed a ton of cash and the Yankees are going to get their money’s worth.
And yet, in a weird way, there is a chance Sabathia will improve his performance this coming season. Is he ever going to be an ace again? No, of course not. But a return to respectability — getting even a league average performance out of Sabathia would be a big upgrade over the last three years — seems possible because of his new knee brace. He started wearing it late last year and had instant success in his final five starts.
“I feel great with it on. It’s kind of like a security blanket. If you watch me while I’m pitching, and you see me spinning off (the mound then you know I’m feeling my knee and it’s bothering me,” said Sabathia over the winter. “It really was two different seasons for me once I put the thing on and got comfortable and used to it. When I have the knee brace on, I can land and go towards the plate. It makes a huge difference in the way my pitches move, being consistent in the strike zone, and just knowing that I’m not feeling like I’m going to get hurt on every pitch.”
At his best, Sabathia used a mid-90s fastball to set up his impressive slider/changeup combination. I remember being surprised his changeup was so good when he first came to New York. I knew about the slider, that’s always been his go-to-put-away pitch, but the changeup was really good too. Lately, that slider has abandoned Sabathia, no doubt due to his general loss of velocity and age. Check out his vertical release point:
That’s what happens when you’re 35 years old and have nearly 3,000 big league innings on your arm. Sabathia’s release point has dropped over the years because he’s simply not strong enough to go any higher at this point, and when your release point changes, so does the movement on your pitches. The reduced velocity doesn’t help either. Sabathia once had a vicious mid-90s fastball/sharp slider combination. Now it’s more of an upper-80s fastball/sweepy slider combination. It’s not the same.
Let’s dig into some PitchFX data. Here are some measures of the effectiveness of Sabathia’s slider over the last four seasons, split between righties and lefties:
Sabathia’s slider is still pretty effective against lefties. The swing-and-miss rate has dropped from 24.8% to 15.6% the last four years, but 15.6% is still pretty good. (The league average is close to 15%.) Sabathia did hold left-handed batters to a .186/.235/.283 (.231 wOBA) batting line with a 29.2% strikeout rate and a 3.7% walk rate last year. That’s great. Not good, great. There are teams who would love those numbers from their well-paid lefty specialists.
Against righties though, Sabathia’s slider has become almost a non-factor. He doesn’t throw it nearly as often as he did four years ago because when righties swing, they never miss, and when they make contact, it tends to fall in for a base hit. That’s a good reason to abandon a pitch. The slider, the one devastating weapon that helped Sabathia bank hundreds of millions of dollars in his career, has been rendered useless when he faces batters of the opposite hand.
Glancing at the pitch location plots, it’s easy to see Sabathia is no longer able to throw his slider down-and-in to righties — the ol’ back foot slider, as it’s called — so he’s not getting those swings and misses. Check it out:
Back foot sliders are supposed to look like a juicy fastball down the middle before they dart in under the hitter’s hands. Those plots are from the catcher’s perspective (you can click the image for a larger view) and Sabathia threw very few sliders down-and-in to righties last year. And it looks like when he did try to back foot a slider, it spun out in the middle of the plate.
That inability to throw back foot sliders to righties may be something that can be improved with the new knee brace if it does truly allow Sabathia to stay more in line with the plate, as he claims. There’s really nothing he can do about his reduced velocity and lowered arm slot, but if he can improve his location a bit and make that slider a weapon again, it could go a long way to helping Sabathia hold his own against righties.
The goal is not to get Sabathia back to the point where he dominates, though everyone would happily take that. Realistically, the goal is to simply be more effective against righties, and perhaps hold them to, say, a league average-ish .320 wOBA instead of a Machado-esque .370 wOBA. Sabathia can still have his way with lefties. If the knee brace can help him use the current version of his slider to keep righties off balance, it will be a big help to his overall performance.
Of course, beyond the on-field stuff, Sabathia is also coming off a stint in an alcohol treatment center, and while that sounds scary, it’s a good thing. Sabathia had a drinking problem — he’s been very open about it since checking into rehab — and he got help. He’s in a better place physically and (more importantly) mentally now. Does that mean he can stave off Father Time and become a better pitcher? Probably not. But it can’t hurt. It’s important that he got help though. Sabathia has to take care of himself and his family first and foremost. Pitching is secondary.
The Yankees are going to rely on Sabathia to lead their pitching staff in the clubhouse this year and contribute as much as he can on the field. Hopefully the new knee braces allows him to regain some effectiveness. Any little bit will help. At the least, the Yankees would like Sabathia to be a horse who soaks up innings every few days. I wouldn’t blame you if you expect Sabathia to have another season with an ERA near 5.00. The knee brace is a tangible reason why improvement is possible, however.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.