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	<title>Toronto &#187; CC Sabathia</title>
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		<title>CC Sabathia Rumours in the Context of the 2018 Offseason</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/14/cc-sabathia-rumours-in-the-context-of-2018/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Dec 2017 11:48:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mike Passador]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CC Sabathia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[winter meetings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=14618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the Blue Jays floating mostly around the peripheries of the Winter Meetings as of Tuesday morning, fans were starved for action. Even beyond the Jays, all the forecasted moving and shaking that these meetings were supposed to bring has yet to go down. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising, considering how swiftly and drastically [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With the Blue Jays floating mostly around the peripheries of the Winter Meetings as of Tuesday morning, fans were starved for action. Even beyond the Jays, all the forecasted moving and shaking that these meetings were supposed to bring has yet to go down. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising, considering how swiftly and drastically the MLB landscape has changed over the last week or two. But still, it’d be nice to see the Jays get out of the “checking in” and “mystery team” territory, if nothing else than to get a sense of the organization’s direction for the near future.</p>
<p>Although if dropping $9 million annually on Tommy Hunter is what it takes to stay in the conversation, anonymity is pretty good.</p>
<p>The Jays are looking to add infielders, outfielders, relievers and some starting depth. Sources say they’ll be looking for Baseball Players. Pat Tabler weeps with joy. You can rank those needs in any way you like, but the Jays will have lots of irons in various fires this winter.</p>
<p>Yes, the company line all along has been that they’re competing in 2018. There’s too much talent on this roster to insist otherwise, even if the team’s odds of true, meaningful competition rest just on the borderlines of slim and none. Actively pursuing a rebuild seems like a path that’s pretty low on the front office’s list of desired outcomes at the moment, though their hands may be forced if the Jays occupy a basement spot approaching the trade deadline.</p>
<p>That sort of gradual acceptance is probably the easiest to sell to the casual fans that make up the bulk of any base, especially one with as many newcomers as this one. That’s not a shot at anybody – generally ‘<em>we tried and it didn’t quite work, so let’s change course</em>’ is better to hear for someone who isn’t deeply, foolishly emotionally invested like the rest of us suckers. ‘<em>We’re trading the players who just hooked you on baseball for guys who might pan out in a couple years, but stick around anyway</em>’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. The organization is loathe to waste their positive momentum from the past three years, and even though the situation is far more nuanced than that, that’s how it’s going to look.</p>
<p>Mark Shapiro’s Wednesday comments probably ruffled some feathers, but it does point to the idea that they’re committed to adding pieces to fix the team rather than start all over. “If we were running this team without a fan base, we probably would&#8217;ve started a rebuild a year ago. We&#8217;re trying to remain competitive for those fans.” Quite frankly, I admire the honesty, and I don’t think there are many GMs of fringe contenders or under the thumb of meddlesome ownership who wouldn’t say the same off the record.</p>
<p>So the word is competition, and whether that’s halfhearted or not that’s how this offseason will be framed. That’s what makes the late day news about the team meeting with CC Sabathia fairly compelling.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">CC Sabathia met with Blue Jays on Tuesday</p>
<p>&mdash; George A. King III (@GeorgeAKingIII) <a href="https://twitter.com/GeorgeAKingIII/status/940769152503091201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 13, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>While it’s a bit out of left field as far as rumors go, Sabathia makes some sense for the Jays. He checks a lot of boxes for a team that’s one foot in, one foot out that may need to adjust on the fly. On a larger scale, the fact that they&#8217;re interested in Sabathia gives us a little window into how the team may be approaching free agency in general.</p>
<h3>Familiarity</h3>
<p>Firstly, the most Sabathia-specific and likely the least important in any discussion, is the fact that the big southpaw is familiar with dealing in the AL East. Things will be a bit different now that the Yankees have the two best power hitters in the game, but he certainly knows how to navigate his way through the division’s hitter-friendly ballparks and has some knowledge about each team’s familiar faces. There’s also, of course, the Cleveland connection between Sabathia and the front office. Say what you will about that – I don’t think it’s particularly meaningful once real negotiations begin but it probably wouldn’t hurt at all.</p>
<h3>Performance</h3>
<p>Secondly, Sabathia has been pretty solid over the last two seasons. He’s collected 1.7 and 2.1 WAR over the last two years following three lackluster seasons where he looked to be running out of steam. That downswing was aided by injuries and BABIPs that were above .308 and pointed to a few tough breaks –his career BABIP is .294, and he was at .288 and .276 in 2016 and 2017. One other thing that might help him is the fact that his general decline coincides with a jump in HR/9. It’s fair to question whether that’s a cause or effect of his dropping numbers, but getting out of Yankee stadium for half of his starts might help out regardless. Sabathia has surrendered at least 1.0 HR/9 in six consecutive seasons after achieving the feat just twice in his first 11 campaigns, with only the 11<sup>th</sup> and final one coming in New York. He’s obviously a different pitcher now than he was 15 years ago and the Rogers Center isn’t exactly cavernous, but Sabathia still has something to give.</p>
<p>He’s still racking up strikeouts at a decent clip and has his ground ball rate hovering in the 50 percent neighborhood. His ERA might not dip under 4.00 again but Sabathia would be asked to fill one of the final rotation spots and makes for a solid addition in that regard.</p>
<h3>Durability</h3>
<p>Thirdly, Sabathia has emerged as a pretty consistent option. He’s made 29, 30 and 27 starts over his past three seasons and can probably be penciled in for around 165 innings. Last year, Sabathia’s 148.2 innings would’ve placed him third on the team behind Marcus Stroman and Marco Estrada. Obviously that was sort of a nightmare scenario, but pitching depth in the form of an adequate veteran who can eat innings is most definitely something that the Jays should be interested in. This is a team that handed starts to Mat Latos, Casey Lawrence, Cesar Valdez and Nick Tepesch, among others. No team is completely healthy but the Jays didn’t have any potential long term solutions from AAA that were ready to step up. Their lack of MLB caliber depth was exposed in a bad way, and someone like Sabathia would go a long way towards patching that hole in the immediate future.</p>
<h3>Flexibility</h3>
<p>Lastly, and most importantly, is the fact that Sabathia and his presumed contract would allow the Jays to embrace all outcomes. He’s going to someone on a moderate salary with not a lot of years attached that can either function as a back-end starter on a good team or someone to soak up work and bridge the gap from one core to the next.</p>
<p>It allows them to take their time with Joe Biagini, who is currently penciled in as the team’s fifth starter. He’s been asked to prepare himself for the rigors of starting, though beginning the year in Buffalo might do him some good. If the Jays really want to contend, taking Biagini out for a test drive isn’t probably where they want to be every fifth game to start the year. They could also stick him back in the bullpen, where he’s been pretty successful. That would also remove the need to pursue someone on the reliever market, though simply waiting for a few weeks will probably turn up some potential gems. For every J.P. Howell, there’s a Joe Smith.</p>
<p>If the Jays do become sellers at the trade deadline, J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada are likely to be popular names, if not Sabathia himself. Again, he’d provide tons of value in just making starts in that scenario. If a tear down becomes inevitable you can imagine that the organization wouldn’t want to rush any of their young pitchers into big league action. An additional reliable, major league pitcher means that the team can lose parts without throwing younger players to the wolves.</p>
<p>So while there are definitely more pressing needs at other spots and Sabathia may not be the eventual signing here, you can see why the Jays are pursuing someone vaguely Sabathia-shaped, in track record and role.</p>
<p>In short, why not? Toronto is going to be operating in this tier in free agency, hunting players who look like complementary pieces on a team in the playoff chase without attaching themselves to long term risk. The real impact additions here won&#8217;t be for the pitching staff and will probably cost a lot more, either in dollars or term or prospects, than the team is likely willing to spend. The CC types will help the team in one way or another without hamstringing them down the line. There’s plenty of variance here, between the team’s age, thin lineup and injury history, and any option that creates a little bit of certainty helps draw the map no matter what. Is it true competing? Maybe, if a bunch of things go right. Does it leave all options on the table? You bet, and that’s probably the safest choice right now from a combined business and baseball perspective.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Brad Penner, USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>3 Things to Watch For Against the Yankees</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/06/01/3-things-to-watch-for-against-the-yankees/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jun 2017 14:54:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[BP Toronto Team]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Series Preview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CC Sabathia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Yankees]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=11301</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Written by Matt Gwin, Rachael McDaniel, and Joshua Howsam Attack of the Yankees Young-ins The Yankees have the second best record in the American League. At an active roster age of 28.1 years, they&#8217;re also quite young. If it were any other team, that’d be a nice feat, but for the ‘aging’ Yankees, it’s seems [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center"><i>Written by Matt Gwin, Rachael McDaniel, and Joshua Howsam</i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left">Attack of the Yankees Young-ins</h3>
<p>The Yankees have the second best record in the American League. At an active roster age of 28.1 years, they&#8217;re also quite young.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Rplot01.jpg"><img class="alignnone wp-image-11310" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/Rplot01.jpg" alt="Rplot01" width="500" height="367" /></a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">If it were any other team, that’d be a nice feat, but for the ‘aging’ Yankees, it’s </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400">seems</span> </em><span style="font-weight: 400">like a miracle. Seem is the operative word here, however, as the Yankees have actually been de-aging since their most recent peak average age of 31.8 in 2013. However, there’s a reason that we’ve been trained to think of this team as being old. Not since 1992 have the Yankees finished the season with an average age under 29 years. Ergo, the last time that the Yankees were as young of a team as they are right now, Roberto Osuna hadn’t even been conceived.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">New York took an interesting path to get to this point, as well. Unlike the Astros and Cubs of this world, the Yankees never opted for an everything must go fire sale. Instead, a bout of patience, timely trades, and player development have gotten them to their current point.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">In this series, the Blue Jays will be facing New York’s youngest player in 23-year-old starter Luis Severino as well as their third youngest player in 24-year-old starter Jordan Montgomery. The Yankees’ starters will be caught by 24-year-old catcher Gary Sanchez and their lineup will be anchored by 25-year-old outfielder and offensive world beater Aaron Judge. Judge has been so good to start this season that with Angels’ youthful phenom Mike Trout injured, some think Aaron could win the </span><a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/yankees-aaron-judge-real-shot-al-mvp-mike-trout-article-1.3206607"><span style="font-weight: 400">AL MVP Award</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">This isn’t all to say that the Yankees are devoid of veterans, however, as New York’s first starter will be their second oldest player: 36-year-old C.C. Sabathia. But it does mark quite a stark contrast with a truly aging Toronto team that has refused to adjust and retool. Players like Marcus Stroman, Devon Travis, and Kevin Pillar, who we generally think of as being on the younger side of the team, are all well older than the four key Yankees players mentioned above. In fact, in terms of the Blue Jays core players, only Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna are under the age of 26. Let&#8217;s just hope this team of aging stars can outdo the Yankees&#8217; young-ins.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>CC Sabathia Is Commanding His Cutter Again</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">We’re only two months into the 2017 baseball season, but for C.C. Sabathia, this year has already been quite the roller coaster ride. After beginning the year with three consecutive quality starts, allowing only three earned runs over 18.1 innings pitched, Sabathia followed this up with four consecutive starts allowing four or more earned runs. The Yankees managed to win two of these games thanks to their offense, but concerns about Sabathia’s longevity in the Yankees rotation began to be bandied about in earnest.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Over his last three starts, though, Sabathia has done much to quiet such concerns, seemingly having reverted to the fine form he showed in his first three starts. Since his 5-3 loss against the Reds on May 9th, he has once again allowed only three earned runs over 18 innings pitched, most recently striking out nine batters over 6.1 innings in a 3-2 win over the A’s.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">What was going wrong for Sabathia during his rough stretch, and what has he done to turn it around, at least for now? Sabathia himself imputes his recent success not to any mechanical changes, but rather to increased focus on locating his cutter.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Sabathia described his use of the cutter over his four bad starts as “<a href="http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/cc-sabathia-has-third-straight-solid-start-1.13674292" target="_blank">a little bit lazy</a>” &#8211; instead of riding in on the hands of right-handed hitters, his cutters would stay over the plate, making them an eminently hittable pitch. Here’s where Sabathia’s cutters ended up during his four bad starts.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/bad-sabathia.png"><img class="alignnone wp-image-11312" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/bad-sabathia.png" alt="bad sabathia" width="400" height="400" /></a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Almost half of the 67 cutters Sabathia threw to right-handed batters over this period ended up in the strike zone. As a result, right-handed batters hit .407 and slugged .741 against this pitch.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Compare that to where Sabathia’s cutters have been located over his past three quality starts: </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/good-sabathia.png"><img class="alignnone wp-image-11313" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2017/06/good-sabathia.png" alt="good sabathia" width="400" height="400" /></a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Instead of staying on the inner half of the strike zone, Sabathia’s cutters have tended to run inside on right-handed hitters, to great success. Right-handed hitters’ batting average against the cutter over Sabathia’s past three games has dropped all the way down to .174, and Sabathia has generated nine strikeouts with the pitch &#8211; as opposed to three strikeouts over his four bad starts.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Sabathia has consistently thrown the cutter around 30 percent of the time this season. With the Jays’ lineup heavy with right-handed hitters, Sabathia will likely continue to use it frequently in his Thursday start against the Jays &#8211; and while the Jays scored six runs off Sabathia last time they faced him, that start was in the midst of Sabathia’s period of struggle commanding the cutter. (And the Jays lost that game anyway.) The Jays’ success, or lack thereof, in the series opener should have a lot to do with Sabathia’s command of this pitch against the Jays’ right-handed power. </span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Those Tired Arms</h3>
<p>The Blue Jays&#8217; recent string of wins has fans all excited about the prospects of this club, especially with Liriano rejoining the club this weekend, but they have come with something of a price. Of the Blue Jays&#8217; eight wins (in their last nine games), only two game with a margin of greater than two runs runs. That has meant an awful lot of work for the quintet of Roberto Osuna, Joe Smith, Ryan Tepera, Danny Barnes, and Aaron Loup. That group has thrown 22 innings across that stretch in 24 appearances.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not all that hard to see why John Gibbons has relied so heavily on those five arms, as while Joe Smith and Roberto Osuna have ERAs slightly above 3.00, the case could easily be made that those two have been the two best options. Osuna has been dynamite since <a title="Roberto Osuna is Back to Doing What He Does Best" href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/05/12/roberto-osuna-back-to-doing-what-he-does-best/" target="_blank">junking to his twoseam fastball</a>, and Joe Smith has 39 strikeouts in just 25 2/3 innings. Those two lock down the eighth and ninth, and the three-headed trio of Barnes, Loup, and Tepera are handling the middle innings (with a combined ERA of 2.65) with ease.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t really anything new during this winning streak either, as the Blue Jays relief corps leads the AL in innings pitched out of the bullpen (193), despite the second place Mariners (191) having played three extra games. They also lead in innings per game (3.8) and total reliever outings (a whopping 188, which is 12 ahead of the second place Mariners). That means that not only are Jays relievers tossing a bunch of innings as a unit, they&#8217;re using so many different pitchers that nobody is really getting much rest. This is a far cry from last year when the Blue Jays led baseball in innings pitched from their <em>starters</em>. Obviously a big part of this has been the injuries to 3/5 of the rotation, combined with ineffectiveness from the fill-ins, but it is clearly an area of concern.</p>
<p>There is some potential good news on the horizon, however. Not only will the returns of Liriano and Happ and the continued build of Joe Biagini hopefully provide more innings from the rotation, but the Jays are starting to see a couple of out of favour relievers round into form.</p>
<p>Jason Grilli probably would have been on the DFA bubble if not for the injuries. To say his early season numbers were bad would be an understatement. But things have looked much better of late for the veteran righty; he hasn&#8217;t walked a batter in his last nine outings, eight of which have been scoreless. J.P. Howell isn&#8217;t quite there yet, but he has put up three scoreless outing in a row, despite pitching full innings (and four outs in one of them) instead of the one or two batter bursts that he was expected to be throwing when signed.</p>
<p>With Osuna, Smith, and Loup likely unavailable for the opener, combined with the potent Yankees offense (second in the AL in runs) potentially knocking a starter or two out early during the series, the Blue Jays are really going to need that secondary set of relievers to perform. If that doesn&#8217;t happen, some of these games could get out hand in a hurry.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo © Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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