New York Yankees: CC Sabathia
The Yankees have little to complain about in 2017. They’ve improved their playoff chances by as much as anyone from the beginning of the season, they are getting great production from their young guns, and they now have Derek Jeter alongside Ruth, Gehrig, and Mantle in Monument Park.
If there has been one weakness for the team, though, it has been their veteran pitchers. Sabathia (36 years old) and Masahiro Tanaka (just 28, but a veteran on the team) have the two highest ERAs among their starters at 5.77 and 5.80, respectively. Tanaka should be fine, he’s younger and there are fewer signs that he has actually pitched that much worse in 2017, but Sabathia could be troubling.
Sabathia had a bit of a late-career rejuvenation in 2016, posting his first sub-4.00 ERA in four seasons. He did so by limiting damage on balls in play, inducing the second-highest soft contact rate of his career and limiting hard contact better than in any season since 2011.
The story has been much different in 2017. Sabathia is back to being hit hard (career high hard hit ball rate allowed) and with a repertoire that no longer allows him to blow hitters away, that’s a recipe for disaster. We will now see if Sabathia has another adjustment up his sleeve. When he began to lose his strikeouts, Sabathia was able to adjust and draw softer contact. Now that the softer contact is evaporating it will be interesting to see whether he can make yet another adjustment to extend his career. Given the professionalism of Sabathia and his ability to make adjustments in the past, I wouldn’t write him off. Plus, with the emergence of Luis Severino and Michael Pineda, the Yankees can afford to let him try some things out at the back end of the rotation.
Verdict: Give him some more time to see if he can wily-vet himself into one more successful run.