Yankees CC Sabathia Has Turned Back into a Pumpkin

With five or more runs allowed in each of his last five starts, the Yankees CC Sabathia has seemingly lost the magic behind his early season career revival.

There were many explanations for the new and improved CC Sabathia in the first three months of the Yankees season. The new knee brace he adopted down the stretch last year had provided him with increased stability. Winning his three year battle with alcoholism had refreshed him mentally and physically. A new cutter learned from Yankees legends Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera had transformed his repertoire.

All convincing, but entirely unprovable explanations. Maybe it was a perfect storm of these factors and many more. Whatever the reasons behind it, the Sabathia renaissance has seemingly ended just as mysteriously as it began.

At first glance, CC Sabathia’s latest start against Boston was not terrible. Yes, he gave up nine hits in 5.1 innings, but many of them were groundball singles that just managed to sneak through. He was dinked and dunked to death by some good hitters in the Red Sox lineup.

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On the other hand, the Yankees 9-2 loss was a microcosm of everything that has gone for CC Sabathia in his last five starts. First, he’s not striking anyone out. He only had two Ks against Boston, and is striking out just 5.72 batters per nine in his last five trips to the mound. In his previous 11, that number was a much more solid 7.71 K/9.

Sabathia walked three Red Sox on Saturday, but free passes have been a problem for him all year. That’s nothing new. He’s actually lowered his BB/9 from 3.72 in his first 11 starts to 3.18 in his last five. Neither number is great, but his control is not getting markedly worse during his recent struggles.

The majority of the damage done against Sabathia Saturday was on one swing by Red Sox catcher Sandy Leon. CC allowed five runs in 5.1 innings (four earned) and three of those came on Leon’s blast that ended his night in the sixth. His ability to limit the longball has been the biggest difference between Sabathia in the first three months of the season and his last few starts.

Through June 16, CC Sabathia had held opposing batters to 0.28 HR/9, but that was mostly the result of an extremely unsustainable 3.1% of flyballs allowed going for home runs. While Sabathia’s 2.20 ERA at that point was very pretty, his xFIP (which normalizes home run rates to league average) was actually more than double that at 4.59. That could indicate that CC was simply lucky during his early season success and this whole thing was a mirage.

Since then, 14.3% of the flyballs Sabathia has allowed have left the yard. That’s a little higher than league average, but actually below the 16.6% mark he allowed last season. It’s probably much closer to the real CC than what we saw during his first 11 starts of the year.

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With a 7.94 ERA in his last five starts, CC Sabathia has probably erased whatever small chance there was of being dealt by the Yankees at the trade deadline. His $25 million 2017 vesting option once again looks like the major albatross it was prior to the season. One of the few feel-good stories of the 2016 Yankees has crumbled into dust. Hopefully there’s a happy ending to this one, but at the moment, it looks like a long shot.