Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: CC Sabathia
A decade or so ago, CC Sabathia was considered one of the game’s hardest throwers. In those days he regularly threw a 94.7 mph 4-seamer. But he is 38 now and the fastball is written into the history book. The charts put Sabathia’s best today at 88.3 mph, in only the sixth percentile.
Yet instead of fading into obscurity, Sabathia has set about proving that speed is over-rated. The exit velocity of opposing hitters is 85.5 percent, putting him just outside the game’s best 10 percent.
How? Like most successful MLB pitchers who get by without velocity, Sabathia lives on the fringes. His “edge” rate is 47.4 percent. Deceptive movement also helps; Sabathia’s “chase” rate – the percentage of time batters offer at pitches outside the strike zone – is 30.7 percent.
As Sabathia’s strikeout percentage has receded, those complementary performance adjustments have become critical. A little more than a decade ago, Sabathia averaged a strikeout an inning; today he’s down to 6.8 per nine innings.
Yet his 1.187 WHIP so far in 2019 is actually below his career average of 1.254.
As with Davies, durability is becoming the drawback, although the Yankees – with their great bullpen – have no incentive to extend Sabathia. Still it should be acknowledged that Sabathia is averaging just 5 innings per start.