Sabathia’s Career Accomplishments Aren’t to Be Taken Lightly
It’s a hard task to get 75 percent of a group to agree on anything, but Sabathia has a good chance to accomplish this feat once he becomes eligible for the Hall. You would hope his career accomplishments are enough to convince the voters that he deserves a place in Cooperstown.
Here are Sabathia’s top career accomplishments:
· 251 career wins (tied for 47th place with Bob Gibson)
· 13 consecutive seasons of 11-or-more wins (2001-13)
· 3,093 career strikeouts (16th on the all-time strikeout list)
· 560 career starts (28th on the all-time starts list)
· 2007 Cy Young Award winner
· 2009 American League Championship Series MVP
· 2009 World Series Champion
The career wins total is quite impressive, especially when you consider that Sabathia ended his playing career in the era in which the role of the starting pitcher eroded into openers and pitch count limits. You get the feeling that no other starting pitcher will eclipse Sabathia’s mark any time soon. The closest active pitcher to him in career wins is Justin Verlander (225), who has an outside of overtaking Sabathia, provided he can stay healthy.
The one accomplishment that stands out from the others is the 13 seasons of 11-or-more wins. It shows that Sabathia was durable besides being quite good. He went 205-115 over this period, which averages out to 16 wins-per-season. Another impressive accomplishment for Sabathia is being the third left-handed pitcher (Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson) in baseball history to record 3,000 or more strikeouts in a career. That’s a lot of swings and misses for one person.