Major League Baseball

Yankees won't miss injured CC Sabathia

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 11:05 p.m. ET

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Sunday, CC Sabathia exited his start against the Indians in the third inning with a knee injury. Monday, Sabathia hit the 15-day disabled list and the Yankees signed veteran Chris Capuano, which was convenient since they DFA'd him just a few days ago.

The Yankees can hardly complain about injuries this season; as Ken Davidoff points out, they've actually been extraordinarily healthy this season, which explains a lot about their season:

First, it would be idiotic to castigate any folks (me very much included!) who didn’t think the Yankees would be this good. There was simply no good reason to think nearly all those watches would keep on ticking for (so far) the whole season. All we knew about the Yankees and the rest of the American League East was that there was a great deal of “play” in the projections, that the team projected to finish first might well finish last, and vice versa. For me, the only HUGE surprise in the entire American League is the Mariners having the worst run differential. And you can throw the Royals in there, too, probably. But the East? Nah, not really. Except for the Red Sox, and even they’re just a great week away from being within some reasonable distance of reasonable projections.

But I wanted to write about Sabathia. I’m actually sorta heartened by the news about Sabathia’s “screw it” approach, because it validated a theory of mine, which is that if a middle-aged pitcher suddenly starts throwing harder than he’s been throwing, it’s probably not sustainable. And indeed it wasn’t.

Please let me be clear about one thing: I TAKE ZERO PLEASURE IN SABATHIA’S INJURY. There’s a special level of hell reserved for sports fans who take pleasure in some athlete suffering physical pain (which often leads to emotional pain, too). Baseball’s better when CC Sabathia is healthy, and even better when he’s healthy and pitching well. There’s never been another pitcher like Sabathia, and he will be missed when he’s gone.

Just maybe not by the New York Yankees over the next six weeks. Usually the loss of any player is a negative; if nothing else, the absence means less depth. Before he got hurt, Sabathia was probably one of the most talented dozen-odd pitchers in the Yankees organization, and you hate to lose one of your dozen-odd most talented pitchers in the home stretch of a pennant race.

Except in this case, there hasn’t been any public indication that management was going to stop handling Sabathia as if he were one of the organization’s seven or eight most talented pitchers. Which he hasn’t seemed to be since ... well, maybe 2013. Sabathia seems to have established the limits of xFIP, as he’s graded out well in that metric this season and especially last season, even as his ERA’s cleared 5 (and his FIP’s approached that).

Granted, it’s been only 32 starts – eight last season, 24 this season – but a ridiculous number of fly balls hit off Sabathia have cleared the fence for home runs. Is all of that just bad luck? Some, almost for sure. All, maybe not.

Anyway, there’s been talk – granted, mostly on the Internet and sports radio – about turning Sabathia into a relief pitcher, at least for a while. But his $23 million salary speaks loudly, as does his $25 million salary next year.

But now management’s off the hook, and now the rotation the rest of the way should look a lot like this:

Masahiro Tanaka
Luis Severino
Michael Pineda
Nathan Eovaldi
Iván Nova / Adam Warren

Yes, the Yankees do have six starters who are at least marginally better than Sabathia, so they don’t even have to worry about the rookie Severino getting overworked; they can always just plug their No. 6 guy into that slot if Severino needs a little break. Or they might actually go with a six-man rotation, as previously suggested, but this time without their $23 Million Man.

Granted, everything might look a lot different in a couple of weeks. Sabathia might feel well enough to pitch, leaving Joe Girardi in an uncomfortable situation. And of course the watch will start ticking again for Sabathia, whether in a couple of weeks or next winter or next spring or whenever he’s deemed healthy enough to pitch. I doubt if even the Dodgers would flat-out release a guy who’s still owed $25 million.

Or maybe they would. The Dodgers surprise me just about every week. But the Yankees don’t surprise me, not lately anyway. It seems that they see releasing or demoting a high-paid player as a form of losing face or maybe as somehow beneath them. Which is why I expect Sabathia to open next season in the rotation if he’s feeling up to it. Which, with a winter of rest and rehabilitation, he probably will be.

In the short term, though? The Yankees have the perfect excuse to forget about the money and instead rely on talent as it’s been demonstrated over the last five months. Which probably won’t be enough to beat out the Blue Jays, but should be enough to fend off all those pesky wild-card contenders.    

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