Posts tagged C.C. Sabathia at FanHouse

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I get pretty aggravated when America doesn't win things we should. For example, I don't even watch the NBA, yet I was one of the biggest Team USA fans for the Olympic men's basketball team in August. America should win the gold in basketball. We invented the game and house the best players. I also believe America should win the World Baseball Classic for the same reasons. (Plus, I'm an ugly American and think we should win everything anyway.)

With this in mind, I'm putting together the perfect team for manager Davey Johnson, in hopes that he takes note.

In my view, there are some things that doomed USA's last WBC team, specifically in the Dontrelle Willis disasters. If you are playing what essentially amount to a bunch of one-game series, you cannot possibly survive with shoddy defense, pitching that gives out free passes, or constantly falling behind in the count. Also, too much reliance on power can hurt you in these games. You need guys who can get on base and "keep the line moving."

Great, now we're getting to that point in the offseason where every news update is about how the Yankees are "interested in" the big free agents and how some guy from some network interviewed them and they totally said they'd love to play for the Yankees, and on and on and blah blah blah. We've been doing this comic long enough to know the two great truths about the Yankees, and they are presented to you in chatroom form below.

Have the Yankees considered getting new uniforms? It works for everybody else. Maybe they can get a mascot. Make him a vague, shaggy grey thing named "OPS the Dog!"

Tonight's giant-sized Dugout is after the jump.

From The Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While discussing the Cy Young on Sunday night, Joe Morgan said, predictably, that it was "Brandon Webb's to lose". In fairness, he's probably right. But ... I don't really think he should be. See, the Cy Young is all about perception.

Headshots via Getty Images
Well, not all about perception, but there's a pretty hefty chunk of voting attribution distributed towards the feeling of performance, rather than the strictly statistical discussion of how various pitchers have excelled throughout the season.

If that wasn't the case, then Randy Johnson would have won the Cy Young in 2004, when he very clearly outperformed Roger Clemens on the mound.

In an "ideal" world, there would be someone stuck squarely in the upper left quadrant above -- a pitcher with obviously dominant stats that were publicly recognized (because his team didn't stink). That rarely happens, though, and this year's Cy Young race is, when you really start breaking it down, one of the most intriguing we've seen in a few years.

After all, we have the heavy favorite in Webb, the best pitcher in the National League in Tim Lincecum, the discussion incumbent (Johan Santana), the early season surprise (Edinson Volquez) and a few darkhorses in Danny Haren and Ryan Dempster, the latter which is nothing short of shocking.

See, it's perception that led smart baseball guru types Bill James and Rob Neyer to create a formula entirely devoted to predicting the Cy Young balloting. Not "should win" mind you, but "will win" based entirely on what the voters tend to look for in their winner.

As you can see from the list, Salomon Torres is the eighth most likely pitcher to win the CY. I'm willing to bet he won't get any votes come the end of the year. But a guy who deserves some votes, or at least some Award-worthy buzz, for what he's done since the beginning of July, is CC Sabathia.

With the trade deadline coming up on us quickly, there's been plenty of talk surrounding a certain Blue Jays starting pitcher that may be available via trade this season. That pitcher is A.J. Burnett, who has the ability to opt out of his contract at season's end, and even if he doesn't the Jays aren't sure they really want to pay him the money still owed him on his current contract.

So they wouldn't mind trading him at all, and given the way he's talked in recent months, A.J. wouldn't mind it that much either. Of course, the Blue Jays have another pitcher on their staff who hasn't exactly been thrilled with the way things have gone in Toronto, and he's been letting management know about it too.

Which is why the Jays are calling teams to gauge their interest in 2003 Cy Young winner Roy Halladay.

The whispers just won't go away. Halladay is apparently unhappy in Toronto and has let management know it, and management has apparently responded by doing some quiet surveying of teams (such as St. Louis and the Dodgers) that are far, far away from the AL East in an effort to see what it could get for the 2003 Cy Young Award winner. Apparently, the returns other teams are getting for top-talent pitchers such as C.C. Sabathia, Rich Harden and Erik Bedard has inspired the Blue Jays to at least find out what it could get for one of the best pitchers in the American League. It remains unlikely that they'd deal him, but you never know.

I don't know if there's any way the Blue Jays would actually trade Halladay, but it could be a good way for J.P. Ricciardi to stick it to ownership. With John Gibbons being fired earlier this season in favor of Cito Gaston, and the Jays disappointing again, most believe that Ricciardi won't be the team's general manager next season.

Would there be a bigger "screw you" to the organization and fans than trading away the team's most important player before being fired?

With the Indians in full 2009 mode after trading CC Sabathia to the Brewers, there's a lot of speculation going around Cleveland about changes that will be made with the team. Some guys may have new addresses come August 1st, and players that are still on the team may have new roles.

One of the rumors going around is that shortstop Jhonny Peralta's days at shortstop may be numbered, and that the team is planning on moving him to third base in the future. It's a rumor Jhonny's manager Eric Wedge denies.

"He's our shortstop. I don't see us making any change anytime soon," Wedge said. "I see a guy who is doing everything he can to be the best he can be."

"As [first base coach]Luis [Rivera] has continued to get a better feel for the league and different players he's helped Jhonny better position himself. He's doing a better job of being in the right place at the right time. There is always going to be that ball that is just off the glove. But he's as good as anybody in the game, if not the best, at the routine play."

So Peralta is good defensively, but only if the ball is hit right at him? I understand Wedge wants to support his player (especially considering that player is hitting .341 with 5 homers and 20 RBI since moving to the cleanup spot), but a move to third base would make a lot of sense.

Now that the Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their starting rotation, they have a bit of an overflow in the starting rotation. When Jeff Suppan returns from the disabled list after the break, the Brewers will have six pitchers for five spots. Normally that would mean that either Dave Bush or Seth McLung would be the odd man out, and relegated to long relief out of the bullpen.

That is, if Ned Yost wasn't a visionary who plans on forever changing the game of baseball as we know it. Will the world be ready for it when Ned breaks out the platoon starting rotation after the break?

"I'm thinking seriously about matching up," Yost said. "You look at numbers and try to put each of them in a position that they can be successful. 'Bushie's' numbers are starkly different between home and road. McClung's better on the road: a (4.95) ERA at home compared to a (3.28) on the road."

In Yost's playing and coaching career, he has never come across anyone who has managed his rotation in such a manner.

"I think it makes sense," Yost said. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. All I'm trying to do is give us the best chance to win every day. . . . I'm trying to do what's smart."

You know, during his time in Milwaukee, Yost has done quite a few things that have made me sit there and scratch my head (the latest incident would be sending Yovani Gallardo back out to the mound after a collision at first base). Still, the longer I sit and think about this platoon pitching situation, the more I like it.

If Yost goes through with this and it works out well for the Brewers, platooning your starters will be the new pitchers batting in the eighth spot in 2009.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

So in the last 48 hours the Milwaukee Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their rotation, and the Chicago Cubs picked up Rich Harden to add to theirs. All the Phillies have managed to do in during that span was lose two games in the standings.

The Phillies have now lost four in a row, and unfortunately for them their losing streak directly coincides with a four-game win streak by the New York Mets. Now both the Mets and Marlins sit only a game and a half behind the Phillies. So the pressure is on the Phillies to add an arm of their own to the rotation.

If you look around the National League right now, things aren't set up too well for Philadelphia. The Brewers now have Ben Sheets and Sabathia. The Cubs have Harden, Carlos Zambrano, and Ryan Dempster. In Arizona the Diamondbacks feature Brandon Webb and Dan Haren at the top of their rotation, while in Los Angeles the Dodgers have a NL-best 3.70 ERA.

The Phillies have Cole Hamels and, um, Jamie Moyer? While the Phillies have the fifth best team ERA in the National League, Hamels is the only member of their rotation who has an ERA under 4.00. Their offense may be pretty dangerous, but once the playoffs start (if the Phillies get there) it's pitchers who dominate, and the Phillies just don't have enough of them.

So when will the Phillies make their move in the NL Arms Race?

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

It's been a week of change for Mr. CC Sabathia. Not only did he decide that former Cy Young Award winners don't need to subscribe to the rules of the english language and drop the periods from his initials, but tonight he'll also be taking a pitchers mound in a Brewers jersey for the first time.

Whether or not this move ends up in a playoff appearance for the Brewers this season, it was a move they had to make. After deciding to stand pat at the trade deadline last season--save for adding Scott Linebrink--the Brewers faded down the stretch before losing the division to the Chicago Cubs. To not make a move this season would have told the fans that while they don't mind winning in Milwaukee, it's really all about making a profit.

Now everybody knows that the Brewers only have on goal, and that's to win a championship.

Will CC be the man to help them get there? I'm not sure, but we'll start to find out tonight. Really, the only thing I'm truly interested in during tonight's game will be whether or not Sabathia can restrain himself from trying to eat any contestants in the sausage race.

Seeing as how CC (no more periods!) Sabathia grew up in California, when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season, odds are he's going to head out to the west coast to pitch somewhere. With that in mind, the Los Angeles Dodgers were interested in trading for Sabathia because they feel they'd have a good shot at re-signing him to a long term deal after the 2008 season.

They nearly had him too, but apparently team owner Frank McCourt just wasn't willing to pull the trigger on the move.

Shortly after the Milwaukee Brewers finalized a trade for reigning American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia on Monday, the Daily News learned that sometime in the days leading up to that deal, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt nixed a trade that would have brought Sabathia to Los Angeles, along with Indians third baseman Casey Blake and utility man Jamey Carroll.

McCourt's reason was financial, according to multiple industry sources. But that is a charge McCourt flatly denied.

"It's just totally false," he said. "The players didn't match up, and that's just the way it was.

"Trades are complicated, and (the Indians) weren't just going to give us three players. They were asking for something in return. The point being that in this deal, the give and the get just didn't match up."

So now that the Brewers have traded for C.C. Sabathia, one has to wonder what move, if any, the Chicago Cubs are going to make to counter it. After all, a top of the rotation that features Ben Sheets and Sabathia is quite formidable, and the Brewers are currently constructed are more than capable of making up the 3.5 game gap between themselves and the top of the division.

So what are the Cubs going to do to answer Milwaukee's challenge? Word out of Chicago is that general manager Jim Hendry has been talking to Billy Beane a lot lately, and the topic of their conversation is not the weather, but rather what it would take to get Rich Harden in a Cubs uniform.

While this move would make a lot of sense for the Cubs if they could pull it off, I wouldn't exactly plan on seeing it happen anytime soon. First of all, Beane has showed us in his recent deals for Dan Haren and Nick Swisher that if you want one of his top players, you better have a truckload of prospects to send back his way. I'm not sure the Cubs have enough players who would qualify as somebody Beane would be interested in taking.

Then there's the fact that while Harden was on the block at the beginning of the season, that was because everybody expected the A's to suck this season, including Billy Beane. The fact that they're only six games out of first place right now will probably cause Beane to hold off on pulling the trigger on this deal. Though if Oakland falls out of it by the trading deadline, then all bets are off.