If, a few years from now, CC Sabathia is standing on a stage behind the Clark Sports Complex in Cooperstown, New York, delivering a speech on Induction Day, many will point to a moment this past season that kind of encapsulated what he is all about.
It happened at Tropicana Field on Sept. 27. The New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays were meeting, with not-quite-nothing at stake. The Yankees were trying to put the wraps on home-field advantage for the American League wild-card game, while the resurgent Rays had already been eliminated. On a personal basis, in his final regular-season start, Sabathia needed to go seven innings to reach 155 innings, thus triggering a $500,000 contract bonus. He had made it through only seven innings in four of his 28 prior starts.
But that day, Sabathia was rolling through the Tampa Bay lineup, holding the Rays to a lone hit through 4⅔ shutout innings. Then, with two outs in the fifth, a Sabathia cutter got in on rookie Jake Bauers and hit him on the hand. Bauers took his base, Sabathia got the last out, and that should have been that. He had thrown only 54 pitches and the Yankees were up 7-0. There didn't figure to be a universe in which Sabathia would not get through seven innings and trigger the bonus.
Ballplayers can be thick, at times, and sometimes when they do take leave of their senses, crazy stuff happens. The result can be the occasional beanball war, ejections and even a brawl from time to time. Well, the Rays' Andrew Kittredge threw behind Austin Romine to start the sixth, sending Sabathia's catcher sprawling into the dirt. Sabathia, watching from the dugout, started out onto the field but was intercepted by manager Aaron Boone. Plate umpire Vic Carapazza issued warnings.
It turned out to be a long inning, as the Yankees stretched their lead to 11-0. But Sabathia did not forget. Nor did he cool off and focus on all of that money. With his first pitch of the bottom of the sixth, he nailed Jesus Sucre in the left knee with a 93-mph fastball -- the fastest of his 55 pitches that day by two miles per hour. And, yes, it was his last pitch of the day. Carapazza threw him out of the game. Yankees announcer Michael Kay said, "CC just cost himself $500,000." Kay then added, "That's why CC's teammates love him." As Sabathia stalked off the mound, he pointed at the Rays' dugout and yelled, "That was for you, b----."
The Yankees, of course, ended up giving Sabathia the bonus anyway. You can just see the talking heads describing it on a Ken Burns documentary. This is how legends are made. However, it's not necessarily proof that one belongs among the legends.
In November, when the annual "Bill James Handbook" was released, in the section where they calculated the probabilities for players to reach career milestones, Sabathia was given an 8 percent chance at winning 300 games. He finished the 2018 season with 246. That chance is now 0 percent, because on Saturday, Sabathia announced that the approaching 2019 campaign -- his 19th as a big leaguer -- would be his last.
He turns 39 in July, but it's possible he'll be leaving a little bit of production on the table. After struggling to adapt to his inevitable drop in velocity a few years back, Sabathia began throwing that cutter, and focused more on using his slider. Starting in 2016, he regained some of his old form. He wasn't as dominant, and didn't work as deep into games. But he was still plenty good. Over the past three seasons, Sabathia went 32-24 with an ERA+ of 117 and 8.3 WAR. Three hundred wins was probably a long shot even if he had tried to hang on, but you never know.
Now we're all looking ahead at yet another Yankee farewell tour. Which isn't a bad thing. Whatever your feelings about the Bronx Bombers might be, it's hard to deny that Sabathia has been one of the best and most entertaining pitchers of his generation. When the season ends, the clock will begin ticking on Sabathia's five-year waiting period before his Hall of Fame case is taken up by the BBWAA. What will that case look like?
The traditional case
Sabathia has averaged 10.7 wins over the past three seasons and won nine last season. The "Bill James Handbook" projected him for nine wins this season. Let's go with that, which would leave Sabathia with 255 career victories. That total would leave him one behind former teammate Andy Pettitte, in 43rd place all time. Pettitte's name might pop up a lot in this analysis.
The possible extinction of the 300-game winner has been oft-discussed in recent years, as starter workloads decline, complete games become as rare as telephone booths, and pitcher wins grow increasingly outmoded as a performance metric. Sabathia's MLB career started way back in the 2001 season, which is to say it predates "Moneyball," but not analytical touchstones like the birth of Baseball Prospectus. The stats revolution was well underway by the time the Indians called up Sabathia, but it had not been completely won.
Sabathia's career has straddled eras and, in that context, 255 wins is awfully impressive. According to the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, Sabathia has won 50 games more than a league-average starter would have won given the span of his career. That ranks 26th all time, right between Bob Feller and Lefty Gomez.
Sabathia's career winning percentage (.617) is likewise historically impressive. Among pitchers with at least 500 career starts, it ranks 11th, between Cy Young and Old Hoss Radbourn, and just behind Pettitte. Heck, this is a tremendous list, so here it is:
Highest career winning percentage (500 start minimum)
1. Christy Mathewson, .665
2. Roger Clemens, .658
3. John Clarkson, .650
4. Randy Johnson, .646
5. Pete Alexander, .642
6. Mike Mussina, .638
7. Jim Palmer, .638
8. Kid Nichols, .634
9. Eddie Plank, .627
10. Andy Pettitte, .626
11. Cy Young, .618
12. CC Sabathia, .617
13. Old Hoss Radbourn, .613
14. Greg Maddux, .610
15. Tom Seaver, .603
One great way to combine win totals and the winning percentages is to use Fibonacci Win Points. Doing that leaves Sabathia at 245, which ranks 33rd all time, between Don Sutton and Clark Griffith. That's more than Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry and Fergie Jenkins. It's easily the most among active pitchers, with Justin Verlander ranking second at 208.
Sabathia's success in the win column, no matter which angle you want to approach it, is in no-brainer Hall territory. Unfortunately, we know better than ever that that part of the discussion is merely a jumping-off point. We'll contextualize Sabathia's other traits a little more fully in the subsequent sections, so for now we'll just note of his other major counting stats, entering the 2019 season:
• Innings pitched, 3,470 (75th all time)
• Strikeouts, 2,986 (17th)
• ERA+, 117 (based on a 3.70 career ERA; his ERA+ ranks 173rd)
The sabermetric case for CC
Chances are, Sabathia's wins will become a side-point by the time his Hall case is voted upon. That's the trajectory this kind of evaluation has been on for a while now. Most long-standing Hall debates about starting pitchers have centered on how real (or not) a pitcher's record was. Statheads thought Jack Morris' win total was misleading high and generally didn't view him as Cooperstown material. That same crowd thought Bert Blyleven's win total was misleadingly low, and thought he should have a plaque. Now they both do. The question we want to get at now is whether Sabathia's impressive win numbers are misleading or not, especially because they are the standout item on his Hall résumé.
The not-that-impressive ERA (again, 3.70) has to be understood in context. The first few seasons of Sabathia's career unfolded during an era of extreme offense. Nine of the top 25 league average OPS totals were posted during the first nine seasons of his career. On top of that, his first season with the Yankees coincided with the opening of the new Yankee Stadium, which has always been very favorable to hitters. On the other hand, Jacobs/Progressive Field in Cleveland played as more of pitcher's park during the years Sabathia played for the Indians, and that has to be considered as well.
The bottom line is that if Sabathia finishes with a 3.70 ERA, or worse, it would be unusually high for a Hall of Famer. Only Red Ruffing (3.80) and Morris (3.90) would be higher. He looks a little better than that by adjusted ERA, but 117 is also not special for a Hall of Famer. Among the 500 starters listed on the JAWS leaderboard, Sabathia ranks 132nd in adjusted ERA (aka ERA+).
That's a blight on his case at first sight, but there are a number of Hall of Famer pitchers who rank lower in ERA+, including Steve Carlton, Jim Bunning, Jenkins, Phil Niekro, Robin Roberts and Nolan Ryan. In fact, according to the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, Sabathia has been very good at keeping runs off the board, all things considered in context. By that tool's runs saved above average metric, Sabathia has 253 runs over the average pitcher, the 23rd-best total in history. That ranks between Radbourn and Tony Mullane, and two spots ahead of Pettitte.
Clearly, Hall standards can accommodate an ERA like Sabathia's, as long as people take the time to consider the context. If they focus on raw ERA, that hurts his case. But we don't do that anymore do we?
Sabathia will crack the once-hallowed 3,000-strikeout barrier, probably sometime in April if he starts the season healthy. As mentioned, he's already at 17th on the strikeout list. If he matches last season's total of 140, he'd end up with 3,126, which would put him No. 14, right between Pedro Martinez and Gibson. Heady company. But if we're going to insist that Sabathia's ERA be understood in context, we have to do the same with his strikeouts. As we hear again and again, K's have never been as common as they are now, and certainly all through Sabathia's career.
The Complete Baseball Encyclopedia has Sabathia at 256 strikeouts better than the averages for his career, ranking 22nd in history. Ryan, by the way, is the all-time leader with 2,444 strikeouts above average, 500 more than second-place Randy Johnson. Sabathia has been historically good at striking out hitters, but not historically elite.
Another possible knock on Sabathia's win numbers is that he was backed by very good teams during his tenure with the Yankees, and also pitched for two postseason teams in Cleveland and another during his half-season with Milwaukee. It's hard to hold that against him, especially since he has been amazingly consistent. His winning percentage before joining the Yankees was .616; since, it's .617. The Complete Baseball Encyclopedia estimates that with average run support, Sabathia would have 229 wins. So perhaps his record is a bit padded, but not to the degree that it undermines his accomplishments.
Finally, and this will bridge us into the next section, we have to look at the number that is increasingly viewed as the avatar of a player's record: WAR. According to the Baseball Reference version, Sabathia's 62.2 WAR ranks 51st all time. He ranks second among active pitchers to Verlander (63.8) and is just a hair above Clayton Kershaw (62.1). At FanGraphs, Sabathia is at 67.8 fWAR, ranking 32nd in history. That's four more than Verlander for tops among active pitchers.
What the Hall systems say
The bottom line is that the leading Hall systems see Sabathia as a borderline candidate. You can argue him in, or you can argue him out. But the systems everybody turns to aren't going to decide for you.
Starting with JAWS, Sabathia's score of 51.0 ranks 72nd all time. He's in a virtual tie with Hall of Famer Three Finger Brown and ahead of others such as Sutton, Early Wynn and Whitey Ford, as well as short-career Hall residents such as Sandy Koufax. The average starting pitcher has posted 73.4 WAR, with 50.0 WAR in terms of peak value for a JAWS score of 61.7. Sabathia is below the threshold in all three areas. In fact, his peak WAR (39.4) ranks at No. 100.
In terms of Black Ink -- a measure of how many times a player led his league in something -- Sabathia is a 22, well below the Hall average of 40. His Gray Ink (a look at finishing in the top 10 of a category) is better (174). That ranks 67th but is also below the Hall average (185). However, Sabathia does score 113 on James' Hall Monitor, which is above the threshold of 100 for serious Hall consideration, ranking between a "good possibility" candidate and a "virtual cinch."
In the latest "Bill James Handbook," James introduced a new measure that combines his win shares metric with WAR into what he calls "Hall of Fame Value Standard." He sets the bar for "Hall worthiness" at a score of 500. If Sabathia reaches his 2018 total of 19.8 in the coming season, he'll finish at 509.
Postseason quandary
Players whose careers played out mostly or entirely during the wild-card era produce a lot more value after regular-season play than their historical antecedents ever did, unless that antecedent happened to spend his career with the Casey Stengel-led Yankees. More than ever, a player's Hall case doesn't just include postseason highlights as a résumé point. They log enough October time to justify real analysis.
It's hard to imagine a Hall candidate who retires from here on out who wouldn't generate a notable postseason record, because our systems (free agency, the trading of good players from rebuilding ones to contenders, etc.) funnels the stars to the postseason. (Sadly, there are Mike Trout-sized exceptions.) More than ever, we can justify asking the question: To what did they contribute?
For Sabathia, this is a mixed bag. He has thrown 129⅓ postseason innings during his career, a total that ranks 17th in history. Pettitte is the leader in this category at a staggering 276⅔ postseason innings. We mention this because we've seen all through this analysis how much and how often Sabathia's career has dovetailed with that of his fellow lefty. Here's a few categories for them on postseason results:
The rankings listed for ERA are based on all pitchers who have thrown at least 75 postseason innings. There have been 51, so Sabathia and Pettitte both rank near the bottom. Yet, it seems likely that Pettitte's Hall case will increasingly rest on his Hall prowess, with sheer volume holding sway. But, also, while Sabathia hasn't prevented runs in the postseason as well he has in the regular season, all quality-of-opponent adjustments aside, Pettitte actually has. Pettitte's regular-season ERA was 3.85.
While Sabathia has a long postseason résumé, it's unclear that will actually help his case all that much. And when future voters try to make sense of it, they might do so while comparing his October numbers to Pettitte's, especially since the latter might well still be on the Hall ballot when Sabathia first becomes eligible.
Putting it all together
Just last month, I was tasked with putting all the members of the Hall of Fame into tiers. A side benefit of a having gone through that exercise is that in an effort to put all of this information on Sabathia's Hall case into perspective, we can plug his numbers into that system and see where he would reside in a tier hierarchy. The core metric in play here is HFI (Hall of Fame Index).
Sabathia's HFI (minus-.210) would not just get him into Cooperstown, it would put him on Tier IV, ranking as the 140th-best Hall of Famer. Tier IV is the middle tier, and while Sabathia is in the lower quadrant of that group, he's safely in the door, with plenty of others behind him. By that system, here's what Sabathia has going for him beyond what's already been dissected:
• The system incorporates awards recognition. Sabathia has won a Cy Young Award and finished in the top five of balloting four other times, giving him a No. 27 ranking in Cy Young vote shares. He has made six All-Star teams.
• While HFI doesn't focus on a shorter peak-type WAR, it instead gives a lot of weight to a player's best 10-year window. HFI basically sees a decade of excellence as a path to Cooperstown, and tends to forgive players with a long decline phase. (Think Andruw Jones and Johan Santana.) Total career value is a sure-fire path, of course, but it's an alternate one to that of decade value. They end up meeting at the Hall door or hitting a dead end. While the peak measurement in JAWS didn't do Sabathia any favors, the 10-year glimpse does. His best 10-year HFI measure ranks 20th among pitchers.
This is what puts Sabathia over the top, if ever so gently. From 2003 to 2012, he compiled 47.0 bWAR. He went 161-86 with a 3.34 ERA (130 ERA+) during those years, won a Cy Young, won the 2009 ALCS MVP, helped the Yankees win the 2009 World Series, made all six of his All-Star appearances and had all of five his top-five Cy Young vote totals. Only two pitchers during that decade posted more bWAR (Roy Halladay and Santana). Only Halladay won more games -- 162 to 161.
This is my Koufax rule: If a player is a Hall of Fame performer for a decade, he's a Hall of Famer. Sabathia's overall case is right on the edge, which frankly are my favorite cases. But Sabathia's sustained, consistent excellence during his prime pushes him over the top. Still, be ready: This is a case that will be vehemently argued over the next five years, and probably beyond.
For me, CC Sabathia is a future Hall of Famer. Besides, thinking back to the moment with Jesus Sucre last September, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell him he's not getting in. Would you?