Educate Me

[englishmike]

Since arriving on your shores three-years-ago i've become a massive basball fan, I can't get enough of it but because i'm 'wet-behind-the-ears' there's certain nuances I don't get.

Example: CC Sabathia has signed for the Brew Crew until the end of the season, at which point he'll be a free agent. The way I see it he'll make approx 16-17 starts. He's had a slow start and is 6-8 although I do accept Cleveland scored two runs or fewer in 11 of his 18 starts and his ERA is only 3.83, but is he the real deal? How much difference can he make to a skittish team who are 3.5 games out as it stands and seem to have heaped an enormous amount of expectation and pressure on a pitcher who is 6-8. If he wins 50% of his games he's worth five games but the Brew Crew will throw five games away in that time anyway.

Educate me please. Thanks in advance.

[Brock Landers]

Well he won the Cy Young last year. He has great career stats. He is the real deal if his past performance is any indication.

[Stacocakes]

CC is one of the best pitchers. He wasn't getting run support in Cleveland and he didn't want to be there so he probably wasn't giving it 110% each night
Will pitch well for the Brewers. Thing is,they won't be able to sign him and sheets next year so basically they mortgaged there future for this season and if they don't make the playoffs then it will be a big dissapointment for them at this point and will set them back a bit

[LT Profits]

Outside of Johan Santana, is there a better left-handed pitcher in all of baseball than CC right now? And he should only be better facing National League lineups.

[pavyracer]

Scott Kazmir, Cole Hamels, Jon Lester, John Danks, just to name a few LT that have pitched better than CiCi's "Pizza" Sabathia.

[LT Profits]

I love Kazmir (forgot about him), but CC is better than the other three. Hamels is close, but Lester and Danks are nowhere near CC's league no matter what the numbers say.

[bookie]

As a small market team the Brewers can't afford to pay Ben Sheets. So they accept that they will lose him next year and will revert to being a bad team for the next few years. So it makes sense to go for it now. A lot of times an elite pitcher like Sabathia comes to life when he goes from pitching in meaningless games to a pennant drive. So they're hoping for that wake-up effect, and if it happens they'll be there or there abouts at the wire. If not...they took a shot in one of those rare years when it's a sensible thing for them to do.

[The HG]

First of all, Sabathia has always been a "head case" for lack of a better term, which is why he does sometimes have stretches of awful results for no "obvious" reason, such as an injury, as he did early this year. When you read reports of how he was doing then and what was wrong, he just kind of shrugged and said he was sure he'd get better later, which did indeed happen. Most other pitchers, when they have bad stretches like that, are at least moderately concerned about it, which he never seems to be.

But when he gets down to it, he can be dominant for extended periods of time. The Brewers want him for the stretch run. They've been playing GREAT ball for 2 months now, and catching the Cubs is entirely possible, and making the playoffs is likely.

Sabathia is a "horse", big and durable, and he eats up innings and usually does so in top form. Check out his month by month breakdowns over the past few years, he usually has great Augusts and Septembers. That's a time when a lot of pitchers start fading or losing strength, but CC is fine at that point, often better and stronger.

Then when it comes down to post-season series, it is huge to have a reliable guy in good form like that for 2 starts.


As far as betting on his starts goes, that's a different matter. He's sure to be a huge favorite in almost every home start in Milwaukee, and a decent-sized fave in most road starts as well. With Cleveland he was in the Bottom 10 in baseball in P/L on his starts, but that could change in Milwaukee. But he still may wind up as a bad bet there too, we'll see where the lines are when he starts.