The Almighty CC Sabathia

via assets.nydailynews.com

Sitting in my dorm reading over Ed's August version of "Kudos and Wet Willies" got me thinking about CC Sabathia. Through all the problems with the rest of the rotation and countless DFA's thrown at A.J. Burnett and Javier Vazquez, Sabathia's name has, seemingly, gone unspoken. He has won the heart of every Yankee fan. How exactly has he done this? Two ways: Consistency and winning. 

CC is one of the most consistent pitchers in the majors. Please, allow me to hit you with some statistics (thanks to fangraphs.com) that further prove my point. 

As you can see, Sabathia has stayed extremely close to his career numbers this year. It's incredible that his WHIP is identical to the average WHIP he has posted for 2001-2009. While his K/9 and BB/9 are slightly worse, he has still managed to get the job done all year. Here's a little more on how...

There's no doubt that CC does plenty of the work himself by striking batters out... however, here's a rough distribution of where balls go when batters are fortunate enough to touch Sabathia. This year, he has reduced the percentage of line-drive balls by 4.4% while increasing the percentage of groundballs by 5.6%. When linedrives are hit, they are more likely to end up as a hit. Keeping the ball on the ground mostly results in more outs. So while CC's K/9 is narrowly down, he has increased the number of grounders and reduced the linedrives. Overall, this helps keep his pitching consistency in line. 

Why else do Yankee fans love CC? Because the man is a winner. This doesn't take too many numbers to prove. Yes, he has the most run support of any pitcher with 180+ innings pitched this year (7.67 runs per game). However, with an ERA of pi (yes, my lame attempt at a joke... and his ERA really is 3.14) alongside his workhorse mentality, he has proven to be ultra-reliable. CC averages 7.0 innings per start. Having a starting pitcher that can always go out and throw seven quality innings to keep his team in contention is a rarity. His hunger to win is almost as big as his appetite before and after the games. He hasn't been given a loss at home since Game 1 of the 2009 World Series (Cliff Lee was pretty good that game). CC has 18 wins this year (wins are a TEAM accomplishment) and, with six or seven more starts ahead, will likely end up over 230 innings pitched and with at least 20 victories. 

While it would be untrue to say that Sabathia has been overlooked this season, I still don't believe he gets as much credit as he deserves. After all, the Yanks are 15-2 in his last 17 starts. Take this moment to applaud the efforts of CC and realize that the Yankees are extremely fortunate to have this man as the ace of their staff. I can only sit and wonder what type of reception he'll receive when he loses a game. Hopefully he can carry the rotation just a little bit longer.